Читать книгу Song-Surf - Rice Cale Young - Страница 4

Art thou enraged, O sea, with the blue peace

Of heaven, so to uplift thine armèd waves,

Thy billowing rebellion 'gainst its ease,

And with Tartarean mutter from cold caves,

From shuddering profundities where shapes

Of awe glide thro' entangled leagues of ooze,

To hoot thy watery omens evermore,

And evermore thy moanings interfuse

With seething necromancy and mad lore?

Or, dost thou labour with the drifting bones

Of countless dead, thou mighty Alchemist,

Within whose stormy crucible the stones

Of sunk primordial shores, granite and schist,

Are crumbled by thine all-abrasive beat?

With immemorial chanting to the moon,

And cosmic incantation, dost thou crave

Rest to be found not till thy wild be strewn

Frigid and desert over earth's last grave?

Thou seemest with immensity mad, blind —

With raving deaf, with wandering forlorn;

Parent of Demogorgon whose dire mind

Is night and earthquake, shapeless shame and scorn

Of the o'ermounting birth of Harmony.

Bound in thy briny bed and gnawing earth

With foamy writhing and fierce-panted tides,

Thou art as Fate in torment of a dearth

Of black disaster and destruction's strides.

And how thou dost drive silence from the world,

Incarnate Motion of all mystery!

Whose waves are fury-wings, whose winds are hurled

Whither thy Ghost tempestuous can see

A desolate apocalypse of death.

Oh, how thou dost drive silence from the world,

With emerald overflowing, waste on waste

Of flashing susurration, dashed and swirled

O'er isles and continents that shrink abased!

Nay, frustrate Hope art thou, of the Unknown,

Gathered from primal mist and firmament;

A surging shape of Life's unfathomed moan,

Whelming humanity with fears unmeant.

Yet do I love thee, O, above all fear,

And loving thee unconquerably trust

The runes that from thy ageless surfing start

Would read, were they revealed, gust upon gust,

That Immortality is might of heart!