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PART THE FIRST
1
THOU mastering me | |
| God! giver of breath and bread; | |
| World’s strand, sway of the sea; | |
| Lord of living and dead; | |
| Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh, | 5 |
| And after it almost unmade, what with dread, | |
| Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh? | |
| Over again I feel thy finger and find thee. | |
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2
I did say yes | |
| O at lightning and lashed rod; | 10 |
| Thou heardst me truer than tongue confess | |
| Thy terror, O Christ, O God; | |
| Thou knowest the walls, altar and hour and night: | |
| The swoon of a heart that the sweep and the hurl of thee trod | |
| Hard down with a horror of height: | 15 |
| And the midriff astrain with leaning of, laced with fire of stress. | |
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3
The frown of his face | |
| Before me, the hurtle of hell | |
| Behind, where, where was a, where was a place? | |
| I whirled out wings that spell | 20 |
| And fled with a fling of the heart to the heart of the Host. | |
| My heart, but you were dovewinged, I can tell, | |
| Carrier-witted, I am bold to boast, | |
| To flash from the flame to the flame then, tower from the grace to the grace. | |
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4
I am soft sift | 25 |
| In an hourglass—at the wall | |
| Fast, but mined with a motion, a drift, | |
| And it crowds and it combs to the fall; | |
| I steady as a water in a well, to a poise, to a pane, | |
| But roped with, always, all the way down from the tall | 30 |
| Fells or flanks of the voel, a vein | |
| Of the gospel proffer, a pressure, a principle, Christ’s gift. | |
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5
I kiss my hand | |
| To the stars, lovely-asunder | |
| Starlight, wafting him out of it; and | 35 |
| Glow, glory in thunder; | |
| Kiss my hand to the dappled-with-damson west: | |
| Since, tho’ he is under the world’s splendour and wonder, | |
| His mystery must be instressed, stressed; | |
| For I greet him the days I meet him, and bless when I understand. | 40 |
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6
Not out of his bliss | |
| Springs the stress felt | |
| Nor first from heaven (and few know this) | |
| Swings the stroke dealt— | |
| Stroke and a stress that stars and storms deliver, | 45 |
| That guilt is hushed by, hearts are flushed by and melt— | |
| But it rides time like riding a river | |
| (And here the faithful waver, the faithless fable and miss). | |
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7
It dates from day | |
| Of his going in Galilee; | 50 |
| Warm-laid grave of a womb-life grey; | |
| Manger, maiden’s knee; | |
| The dense and the driven Passion, and frightful sweat; | |
| Thence the discharge of it, there its swelling to be, | |
| Though felt before, though in high flood yet— | 55 |
| What none would have known of it, only the heart, being hard at bay, | |
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8
Is out with it! Oh, | |
| We lash with the best or worst | |
| Word last! How a lush-kept plush-capped sloe | |
| Will, mouthed to flesh-burst, | 60 |
| Gush!—flush the man, the being with it, sour or sweet, | |
| Brim, in a flash, full!—Hither then, last or first, | |
| To hero of Calvary, Christ, ’s feet— | |
| Never ask if meaning it, wanting it, warned of it—men go. | |
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9
Be adored among men, | 65 |
| God, three-numberèd form; | |
| Wring thy rebel, dogged in den, | |
| Man’s malice, with wrecking and storm. | |
| Beyond saying sweet, past telling of tongue, | |
| Thou art lightning and love, I found it, a winter and warm; | 70 |
| Father and fondler of heart thou hast wrung: | |
| Hast thy dark descending and most art merciful then. | |
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10
With an anvil-ding | |
| And with fire in him forge thy will | |
| Or rather, rather then, stealing as Spring | 75 |
| Through him, melt him but master him still: | |
| Whether at once, as once at a crash Paul, | |
| Or as Austin, a lingering-out sweet skill, | |
| Make mercy in all of us, out of us all | |
| Mastery, but be adored, but be adored King. | 80 |
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PART THE SECOND
11
‘Some find me a sword; some | |
| The flange and the rail; flame, | |
| Fang, or flood’ goes Death on drum, | |
| And storms bugle his fame. | |
| But wé dream we are rooted in earth—Dust! | 85 |
| Flesh falls within sight of us, we, though our flower the same, | |
| Wave with the meadow, forget that there must | |
| The sour scythe cringe, and the blear share come. | |
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12
On Saturday sailed from Bremen, | |
| American-outward-bound, | 90 |
| Take settler and seamen, tell men with women, | |
| Two hundred souls in the round— | |
| O Father, not under thy feathers nor ever as guessing | |
| The goal was a shoal, of a fourth the doom to be drowned; | |
| Yet did the dark side of the bay of thy blessing | 95 |
| Not vault them, the million of rounds of thy mercy not reeve even them in? | |
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13
Into the snows she sweeps, | |
| Hurling the haven behind, | |
| The Deutschland, on Sunday; and so the sky keeps, | |
| For the infinite air is unkind, | 100 |
| And the sea flint-flake, black-backed in the regular blow, | |
| Sitting Eastnortheast, in cursed quarter, the wind; | |
| Wiry and white-fiery and whirlwind-swivellèd snow | |
| Spins to the widow-making unchilding unfathering deeps. | |
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14
She drove in the dark to leeward, | 105 |
| She struck—not a reef or a rock | |
| But the combs of a smother of sand: night drew her | |
| Dead to the Kentish Knock; | |
| And she beat the bank down with her bows and the ride of her keel: | |
| The breakers rolled on her beam with ruinous shock; | 110 |
| And canvas and compass, the whorl and the wheel | |
| Idle for ever to waft her or wind her with, these she endured. | |
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15
Hope had grown grey hairs, | |
| Hope had mourning on, | |
| Trenched with tears, carved with cares, | 115 |
| Hope was twelve hours gone; | |
| And frightful a nightfall folded rueful a day | |
| Nor rescue, only rocket and lightship, shone, | |
| And lives at last were washing away: | |
| To the shrouds they took,—they shook in the hurling and horrible airs. | 120 |
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16
One stirred from the rigging to save | |
| The wild woman-kind below, | |
| With a rope’s end round the man, handy and brave— | |
| He was pitched to his death at a blow, | |
| For all his dreadnought breast and braids of thew: | 125 |
| They could tell him for hours, dandled the to and fro | |
| Through the cobbled foam-fleece, what could he do | |
| With the burl of the fountains of air, buck and the flood of the wave? | |
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17
They fought with God’s cold— | |
| And they could not and fell to the deck | 130 |
| (Crushed them) or water (and drowned them) or rolled | |
| With the sea-romp over the wreck. | |
| Night roared, with the heart-break hearing a heart-broke rabble, | |
| The woman’s wailing, the crying of child without check— | |
| Till a lioness arose breasting the babble, | 135 |
| A prophetess towered in the tumult, a virginal tongue told. | |
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18
Ah, touched in your bower of bone | |
| Are you! turned for an exquisite smart, | |
| Have you! make words break from me here all alone, | |
| Do you!—mother of being in me, heart. | 140 |
| O unteachably after evil, but uttering truth, | |
| Why, tears! is it? tears; such a melting, a madrigal start! | |
| Never-eldering revel and river of youth, | |
| What can it be, this glee? the good you have there of your own? | |
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19
Sister, a sister calling | 145 |
| A master, her master and mine!— | |
| And the inboard seas run swirling and hawling; | |
| The rash smart sloggering brine | |
| Blinds her; but she that weather sees one thing, one; | |
| Has one fetch in her: she rears herself to divine | 150 |
| Ears, and the call of the tall nun | |
| To the men in the tops and the tackle rode over the storm’s brawling. | |
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20
She was first of a five and came | |
| Of a coifèd sisterhood. | |
| (O Deutschland, double a desperate name! | 155 |
| O world wide of its good! | |
| But Gertrude, lily, and Luther, are two of a town, | |
| Christ’s lily and beast of the waste wood: | |
| From life’s dawn it is drawn down, | |
| Abel is Cain’s brother and breasts they have sucked the same.) | 160 |
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21
Loathed for a love men knew in them, | |
| Banned by the land of their birth, | |
| Rhine refused them. Thames would ruin them; | |
| Surf, snow, river and earth | |
| Gnashed: but thou art above, thou Orion of light; | 165 |
| Thy unchancelling poising palms were weighing the worth, | |
| Thou martyr-master: in thy sight | |
| Storm flakes were scroll-leaved flowers, lily showers—sweet heaven was astrew in them. | |
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22
Five! the finding and sake | |
| And cipher of suffering Christ. | 170 |
| Mark, the mark is of man’s make | |
| And the word of it Sacrificed. | |
| But he scores it in scarlet himself on his own bespoken, | |
| Before-time-taken, dearest prizèd and priced— | |
| Stigma, signal, cinquefoil token | 175 |
| For lettering of the lamb’s fleece, ruddying of the rose-flake. | |
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23
Joy fall to thee, father Francis, | |
| Drawn to the Life that died; | |
| With the gnarls of the nails in thee, niche of the lance, his | |
| Lovescape crucified | 180 |
| And seal of his seraph-arrival! and these thy daughters | |
| And five-livèd and leavèd favour and pride, | |
| Are sisterly sealed in wild waters, | |
| To bathe in his fall-gold mercies, to breathe in his all-fire glances. | |
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24
Away in the loveable west, | 185 |
| On a pastoral forehead of Wales, | |
| I was under a roof here, I was at rest, | |
| And they the prey of the gales; | |
| She to the black-about air, to the breaker, the thickly | |
| Falling flakes, to the throng that catches and quails | 190 |
| Was calling ‘O Christ, Christ, come quickly’: | |
| The cross to her she calls Christ to her, christens her wild-worst Best. | |
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25
The majesty! what did she mean? | |
| Breathe, arch and original Breath. | |
| Is it love in her of the being as her lover had been? | 195 |
| Breathe, body of lovely Death. | |
| They were else-minded then, altogether, the men | |
| Woke thee with a we are perishing in the weather of Gennesareth. | |
| Or is it that she cried for the crown then, | |
| The keener to come at the comfort for feeling the combating keen? | 200 |
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26
For how to the heart’s cheering | |
| The down-dugged ground-hugged grey | |
| Hovers off, the jay-blue heavens appearing | |
| Of pied and peeled May! | |
| Blue-beating and hoary-glow height; or night, still higher, | 205 |
| With belled fire and the moth-soft Milky Way, | |
| What by your measure is the heaven of desire, | |
| The treasure never eyesight got, nor was ever guessed what for the hearing? | |
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27
No, but it was not these. | |
| The jading and jar of the cart, | 210 |
| Time’s tasking, it is fathers that asking for ease | |
| Of the sodden-with-its-sorrowing heart, | |
| Not danger, electrical horror; then further it finds | |
| The appealing of the Passion is tenderer in prayer apart: | |
| Other, I gather, in measure her mind’s | 215 |
| Burden, in wind’s burly and beat of endragonèd seas. | |
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28
But how shall I … make me room there: | |
| Reach me a … Fancy, come faster— | |
| Strike you the sight of it? look at it loom there, | |
| Thing that she … there then! the Master, | 220 |
| Ipse, the only one, Christ, King, Head: | |
| He was to cure the extremity where he had cast her; | |
| Do, deal, lord it with living and dead; | |
| Let him ride, her pride, in his triumph, despatch and have done with his doom there. | |
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29
Ah! there was a heart right! | 225 |
| There was single eye! | |
| Read the unshapeable shock night | |
| And knew the who and the why; | |
| Wording it how but by him that present and past, | |
| Heaven and earth are word of, worded by?— | 230 |
| The Simon Peter of a soul! to the blast | |
| Tarpeian-fast, but a blown beacon of light. | |
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30
Jesu, heart’s light, | |
| Jesu, maid’s son, | |
| What was the feast followed the night | 235 |
| Thou hadst glory of this nun?— | |
| Feast of the one woman without stain. | |
| For so conceivèd, so to conceive thee is done; | |
| But here was heart-throe, birth of a brain, | |
| Word, that heard and kept thee and uttered thee outright. | 240 |
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31
Well, she has thee for the pain, for the | |
| Patience; but pity of the rest of them! | |
| Heart, go and bleed at a bitterer vein for the | |
| Comfortless unconfessed of them— | |
| No not uncomforted: lovely-felicitous Providence | 245 |
| Finger of a tender of; O of a feathery delicacy, the breast of the | |
| Maiden could obey so, be a bell to, ring of it, and | |
| Startle the poor sheep back! is the shipwrack then a harvest, does tempest carry the grain for thee? | |
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32
I admire thee, master of the tides, | |
| Of the Yore-flood, of the year’s fall; | 250 |
| The recurb and the recovery of the gulf’s sides, | |
| The girth of it and the wharf of it and the wall; | |
| Stanching, quenching ocean of a motionable mind; | |
| Ground of being, and granite of it: past all | |
| Grasp God, throned behind | 255 |
| Death with a sovereignty that heeds but hides, bodes but abides; | |
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33
With a mercy that outrides | |
| The all of water, an ark | |
| For the listener; for the lingerer with a love glides | |
| Lower than death and the dark; | 260 |
| A vein for the visiting of the past-prayer, pent in prison, | |
| The-last-breath penitent spirits—the uttermost mark | |
| Our passion-plungèd giant risen, | |
| The Christ of the Father compassionate, fetched in the storm of his strides. | |
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34
Now burn, new born to the world, | 265 |
| Doubled-naturèd name, | |
| The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled | |
| Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame, | |
| Mid-numbered He in three of the thunder-throne! | |
| Not a dooms-day dazzle in his coming nor dark as he came; | 270 |
| Kind, but royally reclaiming his own; | |
| A released shower, let flash to the shire, not a lightning of fire hard-hurled. | |
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35
Dame, at our door | |
| Drowned, and among our shoals, | |
| Remember us in the roads, the heaven-haven of the Reward: | 275 |
| Our King back, oh, upon English souls! | |
| Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east, | |
| More brightening her, rare-dear Britain, as his reign rolls, | |
| Pride, rose, prince, hero of us, high-priest, | |
| Our hearts’ charity’s hearth’s fire, our thoughts’ chivalry’s throng’s Lord. | 280 |
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| See Notes. |
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