[[A-text]]to the happy memory of five Francisan nuns,exiles by the Falck Laws, drowned betweenmidnight & morning of December 7 [[1875]].
Part the first God! giver of breath and bread;World's strand, sway of the sea; Lord of living & dead; Thou hast bound bones & veins in me, fastened me flesh, And after it álmost únmade, what with dread, Thy doing: & dost thou touch me afresh?Over again I feel thy finger & find theé.
## O at lightning & lashed rod;Thou heardst me truer than tongue confess Thy terror, O Christ, O God; Thou knowest the walls, altar & hour & night: The swoon of a heart that the sweep & the hurl of thee trod Hard down with a horror of height:And the midriff astrain with leaning of, laced with fire of stress.
## Before me, the hurtle of hellBehind, where, where was a, where was a place? I whirled out wings that spell And fled with a fling of the heart to the heart of the Host. My heart, but you were dovewinged, I can tell, Carrier-witted, I am bold to boast,To flash from the flame to the flame then, tower from the grace to the grace.
## In an hourglass -- at the wallFast, but mined with a motion, a drift, And it crowds & it combs to the fall; I steady as a water in a well, to a poise, to a pane, But roped with, always, all the way down from the tall Fells or flanks of the voel, a veinOf the gospel proffer, a pressure, a principle, Christ's gift.
## To the stars, lovely-asunderStarlight, wafting him out of it; and Glow, glory in thunder; Kiss my hand to the dappled-with-damson west: Since, tho' he is under the world's splendour & wonder, His mystery must be instressed, stressed;For I greet him the days I meet him, & bless when I understand.
## Springs the stress feltNor first from heaven (and few know this) Swings the stroke dealt -- Stroke & a stress that stars & storms deliver, That guilt is hushed by, hearts are flushed by & melt -- But it rides time like riding a river(And here the faithful waver, the faithless fable & miss).
## Of his going in Galilee;Warm-laid grave of a womb-life grey; Manger, maiden's knee; The dense & the driven Passion, & frightful sweat: Thence the discharge of it, there its swelling to be, Tho' felt before, though in high flood yet --What none would have known of it, only the heart, being hard at bay,
## We lash with the best or worstWord last! How a lush-kept plush-capped sloe Will, mouthed to flesh-burst, Gush! -- flush the man, the being with it, sour or sweet, Brim, in a flash, full! -- Hither then, last or first, To hero of Calvary, Christ,'s feet --Never ask if meaning it, wanting it, warned of it -- men go.
## God, three-numberéd form;Wring thy rebel, dogged in den, Man's malice, with wrecking & storm. Beyond saying sweet, past telling of tongue, Thou art lightning & love, I found it, a winter & warm; Father & fondler of heart thou hast wrung:Hast thy dark descending & most art merciful then.
## And with fire in him forge thy willOr rather, rather then, stealing as Spring Through him, melt him but master him still: Whether át ónce, as once at a crash Paul, Or as Austin, a lingering-out sweet skill, Make mercy in all of us, out of us allMastery, but be adored, but be adored king.
Part the second The flange & the rail; flame,Fang, or flood" goes Death on drum, And storms bugle his fame. But wé dréam we are rooted in earth -- Dust! Flesh falls within sight of us, we, though our flower the same, Wave with the meadow, forget that there mustThe sour scythe cringe, & the blear share come.
## American-outward-bound,Take settler & seamen, tell men with women, Two hundred souls in the round -- O Father, not under thy feathers nor ever as guessing The goal was a shoal, of a fourth the doom to be drowned; Yet díd the dark side of the bay of thy blessingNot vault them, the million of rounds of thy mercy not reeve even them in?
## Hurling the haven behind,The Deutschland, on Sunday; & so the sky keeps, For the infinite air is unkind, And the sea flint-flake, black-backed in the regular blow, Sitting Eastnortheast, in cursed quarter, the wind; Wiry & white-fiery & whírlwind-swivellèd snowSpins to the widow-making unchilding unfathering deeps.
## She struck -- not a reef or a rockBut the combs of a smother of sand: night drew her Dead to the Kentish Knock; And she beat the bank down with her bows & the ride of her keel: The breakers rolled on her beam with ruinous shock? And canvass & compass, the whorl & the wheelIdle for ever to waft her or wind her with, these she end{~u}red.
## Hope had mourning on,Trenched with tears, carved with cares, Hope was twelve hours gone; And frightful a nightfall folded rueful a day Nor rescue, only rocket & light ship, shone, And lives at last were washing away:To the shrouds they took, -- they shook in the hurling & horrible airs.
## The wild woman-kind below,With a rope's end round the man, handy & brave -- He was pitched to his death at a blow, For all his dreadnought breast & braids of thew: They could tell him for hours, dandled the to & fro Through the cobbled foam-fleece. What could he doWith the burl of the fountains of air, buck & the flood of the wave?
## And they could not & fell to the deck(Crushed them) or water (and drowned them) or rolled With the sea-romp over the wreck. Night roared, with the heart-break hearing a heart-broke rabble, The woman's wailing, the crying of child without check -- Till a lioness arose breasting the babble,A prophetess towered in the tumult, a virginal tongue told.
## Are you! turned for an exquisite smart,Have you! make words break from me here all alone, Do you! -- mother of being in me, heart. O unteachably after evil, but uttering truth, Why, tears! is it? tears; such a melting, a madrigal start! Never-eldering revel & river of youth,What can it be, this glee? the good you have there of your own?
## A master, her master & mine! --And the inboard seas run swirling & hawling? The rash smart sloggering brine Blinds her; but shé that weather sees óne thing, one; Has óne fetch ín her: she rears herself to divine Ears, & the call of the tall nunTo the men in the tops & the tackle rode over the storm's brawling.
## Of a coifèd sisterhood.(O Deutschland, double a desperate name! O world wide of its good! But Gertrude, lily, & Luther, are two of a town, Christ's lily & beast of the waste wood: From life's dawn it is drawn down,Abel is Cain's brother and breasts they have sucked the same.)
## Banned by the land of their birth,Rhine refused them, Thames would ruin them; Surf, snow, river & earth Gnashed: but thou art above, thou Orion of light; Thy unchancelling poising palms were weighing the worth, Thou martyr-master: in th{'y} sightStorm flakes were scroll-leaved flowers, lily showers -- sweet heaven was astrew in them.
## And cipher of suffering Christ.Mark, the mark is of man's make And the word of it Sacrificed. But he scores it in scarlet himself on his own bespoken, Before-time-taken, dearest prizèd & priced -- Stigma, signal, cinquefoil tokenFor lettering of the lamb's fleece, ruddying of the rose-flake.
## Drawn to the life that died;With the gnarls of the nails in thee, niche of the lance, his Lovescape crucified And seal of his seraph-arrival! & these thy daughters And five-livèd & leavèd favour & pride, Are sisterly sealed in wild waters,To bathe in his fall-gold mercies, to breathe in his all-fire glances.
## On a pastoral forehead of Wales,I was under a roof here, I was at rest, And they the prey of the gales; She to the black-about air, to the breaker, the thickly Falling flakes, to the throng that catches and quails Was calling "O Christ, Christ, come quickly":The cross to her she calls Christ to her, christens her wildworst Best.
## Breathe, arch & original Breath.Is it lóve in her of the béing as her lóver had béen? Breathe, body of lovely Death. They were else-minded then, altogether, the men Wóke thee with a we are périshing in the wéather of Gennésaréth. Or ís it that she cried for the crown then,The keener to come at the comfort for feeling the combating keen?
## The down-dugged ground-hugged greyHovers off, the jay-blue heavens appearing Of pied & peeled May! Blue-beating & hoary-glow height; or night, still higher, With belled fire & the moth-soft Milky way, What by your measure is the heaven of desire,The treasure never eyesight got, nor was ever guessed what for the hearing?
## The jading & jar of the cart,Time's tásking, it is fathers that asking for ease Of the sodden-with-its-sorrowing heart, Not danger, electrical horror; then further it finds The appealing of the Passion is tenderer in prayer apart: Other, I gather, in measure her mind'sBurden, in wind's burly & beat of endragonèd seas.
## Reach me a ... Fancy, come faster --Strike you the sight of it? look at it loom there, Thing that she ... There then! the Master, Ipse, the only one, Christ, King, Head: He was to cure the extremity where he had cast her; Do, deal, lord it with living & dead;Let him ride, her pride, in his triumph, despatch & have done with his doom there.
## There was single eye!Read the unshapeable shock night And knew the who & the why; Wording it how but by him that present & past, Heaven & earth are word of, worded by? -- The Simon Peter of a soul! to the blastTárpéían-fast, but a blown beacon of light.
## Jesu, maid's son,What was the feast followed the night Thou hadst glory of this nun? -- Féast of the óne wóman withóut stáin. For so conceivèd, so to conceive thee is done; But here was heart-throe, birth of a brain,Word, that heard & kept thee & uttered thee óutríght.
## Patience: but pity of the rest of them!Heart, go & bleed at a bitterer vein for the Comfortless unconfessed of them -- No not uncomforted: lovely-felicitous Providence Fínger of a ténder of, O of a féathery délicacy, the bréast of the Maiden could obey so, be a bell to, ring óf it, andStartle the poor sheep back! is the shipwrack then a harvest, does tempest carry the grain for thee?
## Of the Yore-flood, of the year's fall;The recurb & the recovery of the gulf's sides, The girth of it & the wharf of it & the wall; Staunching, quenching ocean of a motionable mind; Ground of being, & granite of it: pást áll Grásp Gód, thróned behíndDeath with a sovereignty that heeds but hides, bodes but abides;
## The all of water, an arkFor the listener; for the lingerer with a love glides Lower than death & the dark; A vein for the visiting of the past-prayer, pent in prison, The-last-breath penitent spirits -- the uttermost mark Our passion-plungèd giant risen,The Christ of the Father compassionate, fetched in the storm of his strides.
## Doubled-naturèd name,The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame, Mid-numberèd he in three of the thunder-throne! Not a dooms-day dazzle in his coming nor dark as he came; Kind, but royally reclaiming his own;A released shówer, let flásh to the shíre, not a líghtning of fíre hard-húrled.
## Drówned, & among oúr shóals,Remember us in the roads, the heaven-haven of the reward: Our Kíng back, Oh, upon énglish sóuls! Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east, More brightening her, rare-dear Britain, as his reign rolls, Pride, rose, prince, hero of us, high-priest,Our héarts' charity's héarth's fíre, our thóughts' chivalry's thróng's Lórd.
