Collected Works (Vol. I)

THE RAPE OF DEATIL (So strong against the sun) to where they ply Those pallid wings, or turn our vessel’s beak With utmost fury to the North, to dye Our prows with seaweed, such as wise men seek For cleansirz of their altars with slow blood Wrenched trom 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 Jong 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, My sword, that darts among them serpent- wise— And all their warriors fell back a space, And all the air rang out with sudden cries, Seeing the death and fury of my face, And feeling the long sword sweep out and kill, Till there was won the slippery path, the place Whence I might sever the white cords, and fill The ship with tangled wreckage of the | sail. ‘All this I did, and bore the blade of ill Back, dripping blood, to thee most firm and pale Who held our rudder, all alone, and stood Fierce and triumphant in the rising gale, Bent to my sword, and kissed the stinging blood, While the good ship leapt free upon the deep, And felt the feet of the resistless flood Run, and the fervour of the billows sweep Under our keel—and we were clean away, Laughing to see the foamheads sough and sleep, As we kept pace with ocean all the day And one long night of toil ; until the sun Lit on these cliffs his morning beams that play With our sails rent and rifted white, and run Like summer lightning all about the deck, And laugh upon the work my sword had done When the feast turned to death for us; we reck Nothing to-night of all that past despair: Only to-night I watch your curving neck, And play with all the kisses of your hair, And feel your weight, as if you were to be Always and always—O my queen, how rare