The Lake of Gaube

The sun is lord and god, sublime, serene,

And sovereign on the mountains: earth and air

Lie prone in passion, blind with bliss unseen

By force of sight and might of rapture, fair

As dreams that die and know not what they were.

The lawns, the gorges, and the peaks, are one

Glad glory, thrilled with sense of unison

In strong compulsive silence of the sun.

Flowers dense and keen as midnight stars aflame

And living things of light like flames in flower

That glance and flash as though no hand might tame

Lightnings whose life outshone their stormlit hour

And played and laughed on earth, with all their power

Gone, and with all their joy of life made long

And harmless as the lightning life of song,

Shine sweet like stars when darkness feels them strong.

The deep mild purple flaked with moonbright gold

That makes the scales seem flowers of hardened light,

The flamelike tongue, the feet that noon leaves cold,

The kindly trust in man, when once the sight

Grew less than strange, and faith bade fear take flight,

Outlive the little harmless life that shone

And gladdened eyes that loved it, and was gone

Ere love might fear that fear had looked thereon.

Fear held the bright thing hateful, even as fear,

Whose name is one with hate and horror, saith

That heaven, the dark deep heaven of water near,

Is deadly deep as hell and dark as death.

The rapturous plunge that quickens blood and breath

With pause more sweet than passion, ere they strive

To raise again the limbs that yet would dive

Deeper, should there have slain the soul alive.

As the bright salamander in fire of the noonshine exults and is glad of his day,

The spirit that quickens my body rejoices to pass from the sunlight away,

To pass from the glow of the mountainous flowerage, the high multitudinous bloom,

Far down through the fathomless night of the water, the gladness of silence and gloom.

Death-dark and delicious as death in the dream of a lover and dreamer may be,

It clasps and encompasses body and soul with delight to be living and free:

Free utterly now, though the freedom endure but the space of a perilous breath,

And living, though girdled about with the darkness and coldness and strangeness of death:

Each limb and each pulse of the body rejoicing, each nerve of the spirit at rest,

All sense of the soul's life rapture, a passionate peace in its blindness blest.

So plunges the downward swimmer, embraced of the water unfathomed of man,

The darkness unplummeted, icier than seas in midwinter, for blessing or ban;

And swiftly and sweetly, when strength and breath fall short, and the dive is done,

Shoots up as a shaft from the dark depth shot, sped straight into sight of the sun;

And sheer through the snow-soft water, more dark than the roof of the pines above,

Strikes forth, and is glad as a bird whose flight is impelled and sustained of love.

As a sea-mew's love of the sea-wind breasted and ridden for rapture's sake

Is the love of his body and soul for the darkling delight of the soundless lake:

As the silent speed of a dream too living to live for a thought's space more

Is the flight of his limbs through the still strong chill of the darkness from shore to shore.

Might life be as this is and death be as life that casts off time as a robe,

The likeness of infinite heaven were a symbol revealed of the lake of Gaube.

Whose thought has fathomed and measured

The darkness of life and of death,

The secret within them treasured,

The spirit that is not breath?

Whose vision has yet beholden

The splendour of death and of life?

Though sunset as dawn be golden,

Is the word of them peace, not strife?

Deep silence answers: the glory

We dream of may be but a dream,

And the sun of the soul wax hoary

As ashes that show not a gleam.

But well shall it be with us ever

Who drive through the darkness here,

If the soul that we live by never,

For aught that a lie saith, fear.