Jephthah and Other Mysteries

188 MYSTERIES: Hope and desire and life, bid light die under my eye- lids, , Bid the strong heart despair, quench the desire of Heaven. So I shudder a little; and my heart goes out to the mountains, Rock upon rock for a crown,snowlike an ermine robe; Thunder and lightning free fashioned for speech, and seeing, Pinnacles royal and steep, queen of the arduous breast! Ye on whose icy bosom, passionate, at the sunrise, Ye in whose wind-swept hollows, lulled in the moon- rise clear, Often and oft I struggled, a child with an angry mother, Often and oft I slept, maid in a lover’s arms, Back to ye, back, wild towers, from this flat and deso- late fenland, Back to ye yet will I flee, swallow on wing to the south ; Move in your purple cloud-banks and leap your far- swelling torrents, Bathe in the pools below, laugh with the winds above, | | Battle and strive and climb in the teeth of the glad wild weather, Flash on the slopes of ice, dance on the spires of rock, Run like a glad young panther over the stony high- lands, Shout with the joy of living, race to the rugged cairn,