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!

THE DAY-MOON

So wan, so unavailing,
Across the vacant day-blue dimly trailing!

Last night, sphered in thy shining,
A Circe--mystic destinies divining;

To-day but as a feather
Torn from a seraph's wing in sinful weather,

Down-drifting from the portals
Of Paradise, unto the land of mortals.

Yet do I feel thee awing
My heart with mystery, as thy updrawing

Moves thro' the tid