Page:Songs of the Springtides - Swinburne (1880).pdf/96

 A small sweet world of wave-encompassed wonder, Kept from the wearier landward world asunder With violence of wild waters, and with thunder Of many winds as one, To where the keen sea-current grinds and frets The black bright sheer twin flameless Altarlets That lack no live blood-sacrifice they crave Of shipwreck and the shrine-subservient wave, Having for priest the storm-wind, and for choir Lightnings and clouds whose prayer and praise are fire, All the isle acclaimed him coming; she, the least Of all things loveliest that the sea's love hides From strange men's insult, walled about with tides That bid strange guests back from her flower-strewn feast, Set all her fields aflower, her flowers aflame, To applaud him that he came.