l 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.

VII

For the strong north-east is not strong to subdue and to slay the
divine south-west,
And the darkness is less than the light that it darkens, and dies
in reluctant rest.
It hovers and hangs on the labouring and trembling ascent of the
dawn from the deep,
Till the sun's eye quicken the world and the waters, and smite it
again into sleep.
Night, holy and starry, the fostress of souls, with the fragrance
of heaven in her breath,
Subdues with the sense of her godhead the forces and mysteries of
sorrow and death.
Eternal as dawn's is the comfort she gives: but the mist that
beleaguers and slays
Comes, passes, and is not: the strength of it withers, appalled or
assuaged by the day's.
Faith, haggard as Fear that had borne her, and dark as the sire
that begat her, Despair,
Held rule on the soul of the world and the song of it saddening
through ages that were;
Dim centuries that darkened and brightened and darkened again, and
the soul of their song
Was great as their