Will it rock thee not, infant ? "T is beating with dread! Alas! what is life, what is death, what are we, That when the ship sinks we no longer may be ? What! to see thee no more, and to feel thee no more? To be after life what we have been before? Not to touch those sweet hands, not to look on those eyes, Those lips, and that hair, all that smiling disguise Thou yet wearest, sweet spirit, which I, day by day, Have so long called my child, but which now fades away Like a rainbow, and I the fallen shower?' Lo! the ship 90 As a flood rends its barriers of mountainous crag; And the dense clouds in many a ruin and rag, Like the stones of a temple ere earthquake has passed, Like the dust of its fall, on the whirlwind are cast; They are scattered like foam on the torrent; and where The wind has burst out through the chasm, from the air Of clear morning the beams of the sunrise flow in, Unimpeded, keen, golden, and crystalline, Banded arinies of light and of air; at one gate |