Jephthah and Other Mysteries

206 MYSTERIES: Our prows with seaweed, such as wise men seek For cleansing of their altars with slow blood Wrenched from the long dark leaves, with fingers weak With age and toil; to stem the restless flood That boils between the islands; to attain The ultimate ice, where some calm hero stood And looked one last time for a sail in vain, And looking upward not in vain, lay down And died, to pass where cold and any pain Are not. So still the night is, like the crown Most white of the high God that glittereth, The stars surround the moon, and Nereids drown Their rippled tresses in her golden breath. Let us keep watch, my true love, caught at last Between my hands, and not remember death. Only bethink us of the daylight past, The long chase oversea, the storm, the speed Whereby we ran before the leaping blast, And left the swift pursuers at our need With one wrecked dragon and one shattered ; yea! And on their swiftest many warriors bleed, Having beheld, above the gray seaway Between them and the sun, my sword arise, Like the first dagger flashing for the day,