VI

There, clear as night beholds her crowning seven,

The sea beheld his likeness set in heaven.

The shadow of his spirit full in sight

Shone: for the shadow of that soul is light.

Nor heaven alone bore witness: earth avowed

Him present, and acclaimed of storm aloud.

From the arching sky to the ageless hills and sea

The whole world, visible, audible, was he:

Each part of all that wove that wondrous whole

The raiment of the presence of his soul.

The sun that smote and kissed the dark to death

Spake, smiled, and strove, like song's triumphant breath;

The soundless cloud whose thunderous heart was dumb

Swelled, lowered, and shrank to feel its conqueror come.

Yet high from heaven its empire vast and vain

Frowned, and renounced not night's reluctant reign.

The serpentine swift sounds and shapes wherein

The stainless sea mocks earth and death and sin,

Crawls dark as craft, or flashes keen as hate,

Subdued and insubmissive, strong like fate

And weak like man, bore wrathful witness yet

That storms and sins are more than suns that set;

That evil everlasting, girt for strife

Eternal, wars with hope as death with life.

The dark sharp shifting wind that bade the waves

Falter, lose heart, bow down like foes made slaves,

And waxed within more bitter as they bowed,

Baffling the sea, swallowing the sun with cloud,

Devouring fast as fire on earth devours

And hungering hard as frost that feeds on flowers,

Clothed round with fog that reeked as fume from hell,

And darkening with its miscreative spell

Light, glad and keen and splendid as the sword

Whose heft had known Othello's hand its lord,

Spake all the soul that hell drew back to greet

And felt its fire shrink shuddering from his feet.

Far off the darkness darkened, and recoiled,

And neared again, and triumphed: and the coiled

Colourless cloud and sea discoloured grew

Conscious of horror huge as heaven, and knew

Where Goneril's soul made chill and foul the mist,

And all the leprous life in Regan hissed.

Fierce homeless ghosts, rejected of the pit,

From hell to hell of storm fear watched them flit.

About them and before, the dull grey gloom

Shuddered, and heaven seemed hateful as the tomb

That shrinks from resurrection; and from out

That sullen hell which girt their shades about

The nether soul that lurks and lowers within

Man, made of dust and fire and shame and sin,

Breathed: all the cloud that felt it breathe and blight

Was blue as plague or black as thunderous night.

Elect of hell, the children of his hate

Thronged, as to storm sweet heaven's triumphal gate.

The terror of his giving rose and shone

Imminent: life had put its likeness on.

But higher than all its horrent height of shade

Shone sovereign, seen by light itself had made,

Above the woes of all the world, above

Life, sin, and death, his myriad-minded love.

From landward heights whereon the radiance leant

Full-fraught from heaven, intense and imminent,

To depths wherein the seething strengths of cloud

Scarce matched the wrath of waves whereon they bowed,

From homeborn pride and kindling love of home

To the outer skies and seas of fire and foam,

From splendour soft as dew that sundawn thrills

To gloom that shudders round the world it fills,

From midnights murmuring round Titania's ear

To midnights maddening round the rage of Lear,

The wonder woven of storm and sun became

One with the light that lightens from his name.

The music moving on the sea that felt

The storm-wind even as snows of springtide melt

Was blithe as Ariel's hand or voice might make

And bid all grief die gladly for its sake.

And there the soul alive in ear and eye

That watched the wonders of an hour pass by

Saw brighter than all stars that heaven inspheres

The silent splendour of Cordelia's tears,

Felt in the whispers of the quickening wind

The radiance of the laugh of Rosalind,

And heard, in sounds that melt the souls of men

With love of love, the tune of Imogen.