C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Wind and Wave
By Coventry Patmore (18231896)
T
Winnowing the witless space,
Without a let,
What are they till they beat
Against the sleepy sod, and there beget
Perchance the violet!
Is the One found,
Amongst a wilderness of as happy grace,
To make heaven’s bound;
So that in Her
All which it hath of sensitively good
Is sought and understood
After the narrow mode the mighty heavens prefer?
She, as a little breeze
Following still Night,
Ripples the spirit’s cold, deep seas
Into delight;
But in a while,
The immeasurable smile
Is broke by fresher airs to flashes blent
With darkling discontent;
And all the subtle zephyr hurries gay,
And all the heaving ocean heaves one way,
T’ward the void sky-line and an unguessed weal;
Until the vanward billows feel
The agitating shallows, and divine the goal,
And to foam roll,
And spread and stray
And traverse wildly, like delighted hands,
The fair and fleckless sands,
And so the whole
Unfathomable and immense
Triumphing tide comes at the last to reach
And burst in wind-kissed splendors on the deafening beach,
Where forms of children in first innocence
Laugh and fling pebbles on the rainbowed crest
Of its untired unrest.