Studies in Song eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 72 pages of information about Studies in Song.

Studies in Song eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 72 pages of information about Studies in Song.
of the landward sea. 
Stained and stifled and soiled, made earthier than earth is and duller,
  Grimly she puts back light as rejected, a thing put away: 
No transparent rapture, a molten music of colour;
  No translucent love taken and given of the day. 
Fettered and marred and begrimed is the light’s live self on her falling,
  As the light of a man’s life lighted the fume of a dungeon mars: 
Only she knows of the wind, when her wrath gives ear to him calling;
  The delight of the light she knows not, nor answers the sun or the stars. 
Love she hath none to return for the luminous love of their giving: 
  None to reflect from the bitter and shallow response of her heart
Yearly she feeds on her dead, yet herself seems dead and not living,
  Or confused as a soul heavy-laden with trouble that will not depart. 
In the sound of her speech to the darkness the moan of her evil remorse is,
  Haply, for strong ships gnawed by the dog-toothed sea-bank’s fang
And trampled to death by the rage of the feet of her foam-lipped horses
  Whose manes are yellow as plague, and as ensigns of pestilence hang,
That wave in the foul faint air of the breath of a death-stricken city;
  So menacing heaves she the manes of her rollers knotted with sand,
Discoloured, opaque, suspended in sign as of strength without pity,
  That shake with flameless thunder the low long length of the strand. 
Here, far off in the farther extreme of the shore as it lengthens
  Northward, lonely for miles, ere ever a village begin,
On the lapsing land that recedes as the growth of the strong sea
          strengthens
  Shoreward, thrusting further and further its outworks in,
Here in Shakespeare’s vision, a flower of her kin forsaken,
  Lay in her golden raiment alone on the wild wave’s edge,
Surely by no shore else, but here on the bank storm-shaken,
  Perdita, bright as a dew-drop engilt of the sun on the sedge. 
Here on a shore unbeheld of his eyes in a dream he beheld her
  Outcast, fair as a fairy, the child of a far-off king: 
And over the babe-flower gently the head of a pastoral elder
  Bowed, compassionate, hoar as the hawthorn-blossom in spring,
And kind as harvest in autumn:  a shelter of shade on the lonely
  Shelterless unknown shore scourged of implacable waves: 
Here, where the wind walks royal, alone in his kingdom, and only
  Sounds to the sedges a wail as of triumph that conquers and craves. 
All these waters and wastes are his empire of old, and awaken
  From barren and stagnant slumber at only the sound of his breath: 
Yet the hunger is eased not that aches in his heart, nor the goal overtaken
  That his wide wings yearn for and labour as hearts that yearn after
          death. 
All the solitude sighs and expects with a blind expectation
  Somewhat unknown of its own sad heart, grown heart-sick of strife: 
Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Studies in Song from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.