Page:Songs of the Springtides - Swinburne (1880).pdf/22

 More than all flowers his father's eyes relume; And those high songs he heard, More than all notes of any landward bird, More than all sounds less free Than the wind's quiring to the choral sea.

High things the high song taught him; how the breath Too frail for life may be more strong than death; And this poor flash of sense in life, that gleams As a ghost's glory in dreams, More stabile than the world's own heart's root seems, By that strong faith of lordliest love which gives To death's own sightless-seeming eyes a light Clearer, to death's bare bones a verier might, Than shines or strikes from any man that lives. How he that loves life overmuch shall die The dog's death, utterly: