Page:Songs of the Springtides - Swinburne (1880).pdf/25

 Night's thick-spun web is thinned And all its weft unwoven and overworn Shrinks, as might love from scorn. And as when wind and light on water and land Leap as twin gods from heavenward hand in hand, And with the sound and splendour of their leap Strike darkness dead, and daunt the spirit of sleep, And burn it up with fire; So with the light that lightened from the lyre Was all the bright heat in the child's heart stirred And blown with blasts of music into flame Till even his sense became Fire, as the sense that fires the singing bird Whose song calls night by name. And in the soul within the sense began The manlike passion of a godlike man, And in the sense within the soul again