No warning ripple crisp'd the wave To tell of danger nigh;
Nor looming rack, nor driving scud From out a smiling sky, With sound as of the trump of doom, The squall broke suddenly.
A hurricane of wind and snow From off the Shanklin shore; It caught us in its blinding whirl One instant, and no more; For, ere we dream'd of trouble near, All earthly hope was o'er.
No time to shorten sail, — no time To change the vessel's course; The storm had caught her crowded masts With swift, resistless force. Only one shrill, despairing cry
Rose o'er the tumult hoarse.
And broadside the great ship went down, Amid the swirling foam;
And with her nigh four hundred men Went down, in sight of home, (Fletcher and I alone were sav'd) Only an hour from home!
It lies in Heaven, across the flood Of ether, as a bridge. Beneath, the tides of day and night With flame and darkness ridge The void, as low as where this earth Spins like a fretful midge.
Around her, lovers, newly met
'Mid deathless love's acclaims, Spoke evermore among themselves
Their heart-remember'd names; And the souls mounting up to God Went by her like thin flames.
And still she bow'd herself and stoop'd Out of the circling charm;
Until her bosom must have made The bar she lean'd on warm, And the lilies lay as if asleep Along her bended arm.
From the fix'd place of Heaven she saw Time like a pulse shake fierce Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove Within the gulf to pierce
Its path; and now she spoke as when The stars sang in their spheres.
The sun was gone now; the curl'd moon Was like a little feather Fluttering far down the gulf; and now She spoke through the still weather. Her voice was like the voice the stars
Had when they sang together.
(Ah sweet! Even now, in that bird's song, Strove not her accents there,
Fain to be hearken'd? When those bells Possess'd the mid-day air, Strove not her steps to reach my side Down all the echoing stair?)
"And I myself will teach to him, I myself, lying so,
The songs I sing here; which his voice Shall pause in, hush'd and slow, And find some knowledge at each pause, Or some new thing to know."
(Alas! we two, we two, thou say'st!
Yea, one wast thou with me
That once of old. But shall God lift To endless unity
The soul whose likeness with thy soul Was but its love for thee?)
"We two," she said, "will seek the groves Where the lady Mary is,
With her five handmaidens, whose names Are five sweet symphonies, Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen, Margaret and Rosalys.
"Circlewise sit they, with bound locks And foreheads garlanded;
Into the fine cloth white like flame Weaving the golden thread,
To fashion the birth-robes for them Who are just born, being dead.
Yet only this, of love's whole prize Remains; save what, in mournful guise, Takes counsel with my soul alone, Save what is secret and unknown, Below the earth, above the skies.
In painting her I shrin'd her face 'Mid mystic trees, where light falls in Hardly at all; a covert place
Where you might think to find a din Of doubtful talk, and a live flame Wandering, and many a shape whose name Not itself knoweth, and old dew, And your own footsteps meeting you, And all things going as they came.
A deep, dim wood; and there she stands As in that wood that day: for so Was the still movement of her hands,
And such the pure line's gracious flow. And passing fair the type must seem, Unknown the presence and the dream.
'Tis she though of herself, alas! Less than her shadow on the grass, Or than her image in the stream.
That day we met there, I and she, One with the other all alone; And we were blithe; yet memory Saddens those hours, as when the moon Looks upon daylight. And with her I stoop'd to drink the spring-water, Athirst where other waters sprang : And where the echo is, she sang, My soul another echo there.
But when that hour my soul won strength For words whose silence wastes and kills, Dull raindrops smote us, and at length Thunder'd the heat within the hills. That eve I spoke those words again Beside the pelted window-pane;
And there she hearken'd what I said, With under-glances that survey'd The empty pastures blind with rain.
Next day the memories of these things,
Like leaves through which a bird has flown, Still vibrated with Love's warm wings;
Till I must make them all my own And paint this picture. So, 'twixt ease Of talk and sweet, long silences,
She stood among the plants in bloom At windows of a summer room, To feign the shadow of the trees.
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