Page:A channel passage and other poems (IA channelpassageot00swinrich).pdf/205

 The lights whose dawn seems doomsday. None may tell Whence rose a world so lit from heaven and hell. Life-wasting love, hate born of raging lust, Fierce retribution, fed with death's own dust And sorrow's pampering poison, cross and meet, And wind the world in passion's winding-sheet. So, when dark faith in faith's dark ages heard Falsehood, and drank the poison of the Word, Two shades misshapen came to monstrous birth, A father fiend in heaven, a thrall on earth: Man, meanest born of beasts that press the sod, And die: the vilest of his creatures, God. A judge unjust, a slave that praised his name, Made life and death one fire of sin and shame. And thence reverberate even on Shakespeare's age A light like darkness crossed his sunbright stage. Music, sublime as storm or sorrow, sang Before it: tempest like a harpstring rang. The fiery shadow of a name unknown Rose, and in song's high heaven abides alone.