Page:Tristram of Lyonesse and other poems (IA tristramoflyonesswinrich).pdf/175

 When fear to hope as hope to memory cleaves His soul desired the dewy sense of leaves, The soft green smell of thickets drenched with dawn. The faint slot kindling on the fiery lawn As day's first hour made keen the spirit again That lured and spurred on quest his hound Hodain, The breeze, the bloom, the splendour and the sound, That stung like fire the hunter and the hound, The pulse of wind, the passion of the sea, The rapture of the woodland: then would he Sigh, and as one that fain would all be dead Heavily turn his heavy-laden head Back, and close eyes for comfort, finding none. And fain he would have died or seen the sun, Being sick at heart of darkness: yet afresh Began the long strong strife of spirit and flesh And branching pangs of thought whose branches bear The bloodred fruit whose core is black, despair. And the wind slackened and again grew great, Palpitant as men's pulses palpitate Between the flowing and ebbing tides of fate That wash their lifelong waifs of weal and woe Through night and light and twilight to and fro. Now as a pulse of hope its heartbeat throbbed, Now like one stricken shrank and sank and sobbed, Then, yearning as with child of death, put forth A wail that filled the night up south and north With woful sound of waters: and he said, 'So might the wind wail if the world were dead