Page:A channel passage and other poems (IA channelpassageot00swinrich).pdf/195

 Faith born of fear bade hope and doubt be dumb Till Marlowe's pride bade light or darkness come. Then first our speech was thunder: then our song Shot lightning through the clouds that wrought us wrong. Blind fear, whose faith feeds hell with fire, became A moth self-shrivelled in its own blind flame. We heard, in tune with even our seas that roll, The speech of storm, the thunders of the soul. Men's passions, clothed with all the woes they wrought, Shone through the fire of man's transfiguring thought. The thirst of knowledge, quenchless at her springs, Ambition, fire that clasps the thrones of kings, Love, light that makes of life one lustrous hour, And song, the soul's chief crown and throne of power, The hungering heart of greed and ravenous hate, Made music high as heaven and deep as fate. Strange pity, scarce half scornful of her tear, In Berkeley's vaults bowed down on Edward's bier. But higher in forceful flight of song than all The soul of man, its own imperious thrall,