And pierced with love of all things and with mirth

Moved to make one with heaven and heavenlike

earth

And with the light live water. So awhile

He watched the dim sea with a deepening smile,
And felt the sound and savor and swift flight
Of waves that fled beneath the fading night
And died before the darkness, like a song
With harps between and trumpets blown along
Through the loud air of some triumphant day,
Sink through his spirit and purge all sense away
Save of the glorious gladness of his hour
And all the world about to break in flower
Before the sovereign laughter of the sun;
And he, ere night's wide work lay all undone,
As earth from her bright body casts off night,
Cast off his raiment for a rapturous flight
And stood between the sea's edge and the sea
Naked, and godlike of his mould as he

Whose swift foot's sound shook all the towers of Troy;

So clothed with might, so girt upon with joy, As, ere the knife had shorn to feed the fire His glorious hair before the unkindled pyre Whereon the half of his great heart was laid, Stood, in the light of his live limbs arrayed, Child of heroic earth and heavenly sea,

The flower of all men; scarce less bright than he,

If any of all men latter-born might stand,
Stood Tristram, silent, on the glimmering strand.
Not long but with a cry of love that rang
As from a trumpet golden-mouthed, he sprang,
As toward a mother's where his head might rest
Her child rejoicing, toward the strong sea's
breast

That none may gird nor measure; and his heart
Sent forth a shout that bade his lips not part,
But triumphed in him silent; no man's voice,
No song, no sound of clarions that rejoice,
Can set that glory forth which fills with fire
The body and the soul that have their whole
desire

Silent, and freer than birds or dreams are free
Take all their will of all the encountering sea.
And toward the foam he bent and forward smote,
Laughing, and launched his body like a boat
Full to the sea-breach, and against the tide
Struck strongly forth with amorous arms made
wide

To take the bright breast of the wave to his And on his lips the sharp sweet minute's kiss Given of the wave's lip for a breath's space curled

And pure as at the daydawn of the world.

And round him all the bright rough shuddering

sea

Kindled, as though the world were even as he, Heart-stung with exultation of desire;

And all the life that moved him seemed to aspire,

As all the sea's life toward the sun; and still Delight within him waxed with quickening will More smooth and strong and perfect as a flame That springs and spreads, till each glad limb be

came

A note of rapture in the tune of life,

Live music mild and keen as sleep and strife: Till the sweet change that bids the sense grow

sure

Of deeper depth and purity more pure

Wrapped him and lapped him round with clearer cold,

And all the rippling green grew royal gold
Between him and the far sun's rising rim.
And like the sun his heart rejoiced in him,
And brightened with a broadening flame of mirth:
And hardly seemed its life a part of earth,
But the life kindled of a fiery birth
And passion of a new-begotten son
Between the live sea and the living sun.

And mightier grew the joy to meet full-faced
Each wave, and mount with upward plunge, and

taste

The rapture of its rolling strength, and cross Its flickering crown of snows that flash and toss Like plumes in battle's blithest charge, and thence

To match the next with yet more strenuous sense;

Till on his eyes the light beat hard and bade

His face turn west and shoreward through the glad

Swift revel of the waters golden-clad,

And back with light reluctant heart he bore Across the broad-backed rollers in to shore, Strong-spirited for the chance and cheer of fight,

And donned his arms again, and felt the might In all his limbs rejoice for strength, and praised God for such life as that whereon he gazed, And wist not surely its joy was even as fleet As that which laughed and lapsed against his feet,

The bright thin grey foam-blossom, glad and hoar,

That flings its flower along the flowerless shore On sand or shingle, and still with sweet strange

snows

As where one great white storm-dishevelled rose

May rain her wild leaves on a windy land,
Strews for long leagues the sounding slope of
strand,

And flower on flower falls flashing and anew
A fresh light leaps up whence the last flash flew,
And casts its brief glad gleam of life away
To fade not flowerwise but as drops the day
Storm-smitten, when at once the dark devours
Heaven and the sea and earth with all their flow-
ers;

No star in heaven, on earth no rose to see,

But the white blown brief blossoms of the sea, That make her green gloom starrier than the sky,

Dance yet before the tempest's tune, and die.
And all these things he glanced upon, and knew
How fair they shone, from earth's least flake of
dew

To stretch of seas and imminence of skies,
Unwittingly, with unpresageful eyes,

For the last time. The world's half heavenly face,

The music of the silence of the place,

The confluence and refluence of the sea,

The wind's note ringing over wold and lea,

Smote once more through him keen as fire that

smote,

Rang once more through him one reverberate note,

That faded as he turned again and went,
Fulfilled by strenuous joy with strong content,
To take his last delight of labor done
That yet should be beholden of the sun.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

SWIMMING AT SUNRISE

S one that ere a June day rise

AS

Makes seaward for the dawn, and tries The water with delighted limbs

That taste the sweet dark sea, and swims Right eastward under strengthening skies, And sees the gradual rippling rims

Of waves whence day breaks blossom-wise
Take fire ere light peer well above,
And laughs from all his heart with love;

And softlier swimming with raised head
Feels the full flower of morning shed
And fluent sunrise round him rolled
That laps and laves his body bold
With fluctuant heaven in water's stead,
And urgent through the growing gold
Strikes, and sees all the spray flash red,
And his soul takes the sun, and yearns
For joy wherewith the sea's heart burns;

So the soul seeking through the dark
Heavenward, a dove without an ark,
Transcends the unnavigable sea

Of years that wear out memory;
So calls, a sunward-singing lark,

In the ear of souls that should be free; So points them toward the sun for mark Who steer not for the stress of waves, And seek strange helmsmen, and are slaves.

For if the swimmer's eastward eye
Must see no sunrise - must put by

The hope that lifted him and led
Once, to have light about his head,
To see beneath the clear low sky