17 They fought with God's cold-- And they could not and fell to the deck (Crushed them) or water (and drowned them) or rolled With the sea-romp over the wreck. Night roared, with the heart-break hearing a heart-broke rabble, The woman's wailing, the crying of child without check-- Till a lioness arose breasting the babble, A prophetess towered in the tumult, a virginal tongue told. 18 Ah, touched in your bower of bone Are you! turned for an exquisite smart, Have you! make words break from me here all alone, Do you!--mother of being in me, heart. O unteachably after evil, but uttering truth, Why, tears! is it? tears; such a melting, a madrigal start! Never-eldering revel and river of youth, What can it be, this glee? the good you have there of your own? 19 Sister, a sister calling A master, her master and mine!-- And the inboard seas run swirling and bawling; The rash smart sloggering brine Blinds her; but she that weather sees one thing, one; Has one fetch in her: she rears herself to divine Ears, and the call of the tall nun To the men in the tops and the tackle rode over the storm's brawling. 20 She was first of a five and came Of a coifed sisterhood. (O Deutschland, double a desperate name! O world wide of its good! But Gertrude, lily, and Luther, are two of a town, Christ's lily and beast of the waste wood: From life's dawn it is drawn down, Abel is Cain's brother and breasts they have sucked the same.) 21 Loathed for a love men knew in them, Banned by the land of their birth, Rhine refused them. Thames would ruin them; Surf, snow, river and earth Gnashed: but thou art above, thou Orion of light; Thy unchancelling poising palms were weighing the worth, Thou martyr-master: in thy sight Storm flakes were scroll-leaved flowers, lily showers--sweet heaven was astrew in them. 22 Five! the finding and sake And cipher of suffering Christ. Mark, the mark is of man's make And the word of it Sacrificed. But he scores it in scarlet himself on his own bespoken, Before-time-taken, dearest prized and priced-- Stigma, signal, cinquefoil token For lettering of the lamb's fleece, ruddying of the rose-flake. 23 Joy fall to thee, father Francis, Drawn to the Life that died; With the gnarls of the nails in thee, niche of the lance, his Lovescape crucified And seal of his seraph-arrival! and these thy daughters And five-lived and leaved favour and pride, Are sisterly sealed in wild waters, To bathe in his fall-gold mercies, to breathe in his all-fire glances.