ABREAST and ahead of the sea is a crag’s front cloven asunder With strong sea-breach and with wasting of winds whence terror is shed As a shadow of death from the wings of the darkness on waters that thunder Abreast and ahead. At its edge is a sepulchre hollowed and hewn for a lone man’s bed, Propped open with rock and agape on the sky and the sea thereunder, But roofed and walled in well from the wrath of them slept its dead. Here might not a man drink rapture of rest, or delight above wonder, Beholding, a soul disembodied, the days and the nights that fled, With splendour and sound of the tempest around and above him and under, Abreast and ahead? IN GUERNSEY. TO THEODORE WATTS. I. THE heavenly bay, ringed round with cliffs and moors, Storm-stained ravines, and crags that lawns inlay, Soothes as with love the rocks whose guard secures The heavenly bay. O friend, shall time take ever this away, This blessing given of beauty that endures, This glory shown us, not to pass but stay? Though sight be changed for memory, love ensures What memory, changed by love to sight, would say— The word that seals for ever mine and yours The heavenly bay. II. My mother sea, my fostress, what new strand, What new delight of waters, may this be, The fairest found since time’s first breezes fanned My mother sea? Once more I give me body and soul to thee, Who hast my soul for ever: cliff and sand Recede, and heart to heart once more are we. My heart springs first and plunges, ere my hand Strike out from shore: more close it brings to me, More near and dear than seems my fatherland, My mother sea. III. Across and along, as the bay’s breadth opens, and o’er us Wild autumn exults in the wind, swift rapture and strong Impels us, and broader the wide waves brighten before us Across and along. The whole world’s heart is uplifted, and knows not wrong; The whole world’s life is a chant to the sea-tide’s chorus; Are we not as waves of the water, as notes of the song? Like children unworn of the passions and toils that wore us, We breast for a season the breadth of the seas that throng, Rejoicing as they, to be borne as of old they bore us Across and along. IV. On Dante’s track by some funereal spell Drawn down through desperate ways that lead not back We seem to move, bound forth past flood and fell On Dante’s track. The grey path ends: the gaunt rocks gape: the black Deep hollow tortuous night, a soundless shell, Glares darkness: are the fires of old grown slack? Nay, then, what flames are these that leap and swell As ’twere to show, where earth’s foundations crack, The secrets of the sepulchres of hell On Dante’s track? V.