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I
THIS is the song of the wave! The mighty one! | |
| Child of the soul of silence, beating the air to sound: | |
| White as a live terror, as a drawn sword, | |
| This is the wave. | |
| |
II
This is the song of the wave, the white-maned steed of the Tempest | 5 |
| Whose veins are swollen with life, | |
| In whose flanks abide the four winds. | |
| This is the wave. | |
| |
III
This is the song of the wave! The dawn leaped out of the sea | |
| And the waters lay smooth as a silver shield, | 10 |
| And the sun-rays smote on the waters like a golden sword. | |
| Then a wind blew out of the morning | |
| And the waters rustled | |
| And the wave was born! | |
| |
IV
This is the song of the wave! The wind blew out of the noon, | 15 |
| And the white sea-birds like driven foam | |
| Winged in from the ocean that lay beyond the sky | |
| And the face of the waters was barred with white, | |
| For the wave had many brothers, | |
| And the wave was strong! | 20 |
| |
V
This is the song of the wave! The wind blew out of the sunset | |
| And the west was lurid as Hell. | |
| The black clouds closed like a tomb, for the sun was dead. | |
| Then the wind smote full as the breath of God, | |
| And the wave called to its brothers, | 25 |
| “This is the crest of life!” | |
| |
VI
This is the song of the wave, that rises to fall, | |
| Rises a sheer green wall like a barrier of glass | |
| That has caught the soul of the moonlight. | |
| Caught and prisoned the moon-beams; | 30 |
| Its edge is frittered to foam. | |
| This is the wave! | |
| |
VII
This is the song of the wave, of the wave that falls— | |
| Wild as a burst of day-gold blown through the colours of morning | |
| It shivers to infinite atoms up the rumbling steep of sand. | 35 |
| This is the wave. | |
| |
VIII
This is the song of the wave that died in the fullness of life. | |
| The prodigal this, that lavished its largess of strength | |
| In the lust of attainment. | |
| Aiming at things for Heaven too high, | 40 |
| Sure in the pride of life, in the richness of strength. | |
| So tried it the impossible height, till the end was found: | |
| Where ends the soul that yearns for the fillet of morning stars, | |
| The soul in the toils of the journeying worlds, | |
| Whose eye is filled with the Image of God, | 45 |
| And the end is Death! | |
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