, saith
That heaven, the dark deep heaven of water near,
Is deadly deep as hell and dark as death.
The rapturous plunge that quickens blood and breath
With pause more sweet than passion, ere they strive
To raise again the limbs that yet would dive
Deeper, should there have slain the soul alive.

As the bright salamander in fire of the noonshine exults and is
glad of his day,
The spirit that quickens my body rejoices to pass from the sunlight
away,
To pass from the glow of the mountainous flowerage, the high
multitudinous bloom,
Far down through the fathomless night of the water, the gladness of
silence and gloom.
Death-dark and delicious as death in the dream of a lover and
dreamer may be,
It clasps and encompasses body and soul with delight to be living
and free:
Free utterly now, though the freedom endure but the space of a
perilous breath,
And living, though girdled about with the darkness and coldness and
strangeness of death:
Each limb and each pulse of the body rejoicing, each nerve of the
spirit at rest,
All sense of the soul's life rapture, a passionate peace in its
blindness blest.
So plunges the downward swimmer, embraced of the water unfathomed
of man,
The darkness unplummeted, icier than seas in midwinter, for
blessing or ban;
And swiftly and sweetly, when strength and breath fall short, and
the dive is done,
Shoots up as a shaft from the dark depth shot, sped straight into
sight of the sun;
And sheer through the snow-soft water, more dark than the roof of
the pines above,
Strikes forth, and is glad as a bird whose flight is impelled and
sustained of love.
As a sea-mew's love of the sea-wind breasted and ridden for
rapture's sake
Is the love of his body and soul for the darkling delight of the
soundless lake:
As the silent speed of a dream too living to live for a thought's
space more
Is the flight of his limbs through the still strong chill of the
darkness from shore to shore.
Might life be as this is and death be as life that casts off time
as a robe,
The likeness of infinite heaven were a symbol revealed of the lake