Renascence: A Book of Verse — The Sirens Three I - XX

II

The rolling hours like waves broke, one by one, Upon the tide of thought time’s sands outrun, And cloudy visions hovered o’er my bed, Piled to the stars, full soon like cloud undone: III

As, like the wan moon through her fleecy sea, My spirit clove their rack unceasingly, And struck at last upon an unknown ground, More still than sleep, more strange than dreamlands be.

IV

The echoes of lost thoughts wild music made, Like Sirens, heard above the winds that played, Above the rhythmic waves’ tumultuous tone, Upon the hollows of that coast decayed.

V

Yea, on the strand they stood, the Sirens three— No More, and golden Now, and dark To be, Whose vocal harps are love, and hope, and grief;

To these they sang, and waved their hands to me.

VI

Who thence, unto the shore, escaping, clung, As from the dread insatiate ocean’s tongue That lapped the barren sand, and evermore, Above its vain recoil, the Sisters sung.

* * * * * VII

Prone on that unknown land, outcast, forlorn, My soul lay; watching for the eyes of morn;

As from a dying universe adrift, A naked life—to what dim world new born?

VIII

All former things had passed, the sea’s salt tears From Youths’ frail ship had washed false hopes and fears, And relics, treasured once, bestrewed the sand, Wrapped in the clinging weed the seamaid wears.

IX

The bodies of lost Faith and Love, outcast, Spurned by the waves, and clinging to the mast, Were flung upon the shore, mid drift and wreck,— Time’s fragile shells, which frailer lives outlast.

X

As at the world’s end left, the last of men, Or ere the first was sphered, beyond his ken, Was I, mid tumbled kosmic fragments cast— A babe at play within a mammoth’s den: XI

Mid bones of power extinct, and its lost prey, With shreds and shards of unknown primal day— The formless Future, and the Past forgot, The broken statue, and the sculptor’s clay.

XII

The blue-breast bird of space his fan outspread, And shook the starry splendour o’er my head— A wood of eyes that wonder at the world, Glassed in the world’s eyes’ wonder, scanned and read: XIII

Each burning orb that did the sky emblaze Upon my spirit lone cast piercing gaze;

World beyond world enringed, and suns aflame Shot from night’s spangled cloud their storm of rays.

XIV

As doth the glass to one bright point intense Draw the sun’s fervour to our shrinking sense;

So, on my soul, the concentrated fire Of countless suns that moment did condense.

XV

My brain, an instant’s Atlas, seemed to bear The Universe immense, and all its care;

For thought’s frail arms intolerable weight, Since Nature’s triumph still is Man’s despair.

XVI

Untilled, unknown, the trackless regions spread Which Thought, belated wanderer, doth tread, Where, like river flashing through the night, The milky way its myriad star-foam shed.

XVII

Cast from what vital source—what teeming brain?

By blind persistent force—from fiery rain?

Suns, moons, and stars, transmuted, globed, and hung— The dew of Space upon its blue campaign: XVIII

Trod by the feet of Time, as he doth go, A labourer night and morn to reap and sow— Who counts the glittering drops—the spheres that fall, Or marvels they should hold such weight of woe?

XIX

Each drop a desert, or a battle-ground Of life in its arena ringed around, Where without quarter wears the endless war, Till Death the hunter slips his famished hound.

XX

Here, circling with the horses of the sun, Man’s fateful race from day to day is run;

Bound in this narrow ring—his crown, his grave Still as the world for each is lost or won.

* * * * * XXI

Then, like a homeless one, my spirit turned For shelter ’neath the roofless void, and—spurned From the star-desert to the stony one— Scanned the dark waste where yet no hearth fire burned: