Page:Tristram of Lyonesse and other poems (IA tristramoflyonesswinrich).pdf/152

 Than fear may bow down ever: nor shall one Who meets at Alpine dawn the mounting sun On heights too high for many a wing to climb Be touched with sense of aught seen more sublime Than here smiles high and sweet in face of heaven and time. For here the flower of fire, the soft hoar bloom Of springtide olive-woods, the warm green gloom Of clouded seas that swell and sound with dawn of doom, The keen thwart lightning and the wan grey light Of stormy sunrise crossed and vexed with night, Flash, loom, and laugh with divers hues in one From all the curved cliff's face, till day be done, Against the sea's face and the gazing sun. And whensoever a strong wave, high in hope, Sweeps up some smooth slant breadth of stone aslope, That glowed with duskier fire of hues less bright, Swift as it sweeps back springs to sudden sight The splendour of the moist rock's fervent light, Fresh as from dew of birth when time was born Out of the world-conceiving womb of morn. All its quenched flames and darkling hues divine Leap into lustrous life and laugh and shine And darken into swift and dim decline For one brief breath's space till the next wave run Right up, and ripple down again, undone, And leave it to be kissed and kindled of the sun. And all these things, bright as they shone before Man first set foot on earth or sail from shore,