CXLV. HIGH TIDE AT MIDNIGHT. No breath is on the glimmering ocean-floor, A voice of moving and of marching seas,- Earth and her folk and all their phantasies. Then half asleep in the great sound I seem Lost in the starlight, dying in a dream Where overmastering Powers abolish me,Drown, and thro' dim euthanasy redeem My merged life in the living ocean-stream And soul-environing of shadowy sea. K CXLVI, SUBSTANCE AND SHADOW. THEY do but grope in learning's pedant round Son of immortal seed, high-destined man! CXLVII. SAN SEBATIAN. THE Atlantic rolls around a fort of Spain: CXLVIII. LONDON. DIM miles of smoke behind-I look before, Terrible arbiter of joy and pain! A thousand hopes are wrecks of thy disdain ; A thousand hearts have learnt to love no more. Over thy gleaming bridges, on the street That ebbs and flows beneath the silent dome, Life's pulse is throbbing at a fever heat. City of cities-battlefield and home Of England's greatest, greatly wear their spoils, Thou front and emblem of an Empire's toils. CXLIX. CROWNED. ΤΟ I THOUGHT to track a world-disdaining Light, Honoured and wise, his days unruffled run Through chance of time and change, his debtor still: But the old days can never come again Of love in exile knit, whose memories will Shine on the way, though shrinking throngs disown, That lies for me across the seas alone. |