Of all things loveliest that the sea's love hides From strange men's insult, walled about with tides That bid strange guests back from her flower-strewn feast, Set all her fields aflower, her flowers aflame, To applaud him that he came. Nor surely flashed not something of delight Through that steep strait of rock whose twin-cliffed height Links crag with crag reiterate, land with land, By one sheer thread of narrowing precipice Bifront, that binds and sunders Abyss from hollower imminent abyss And wilder isle with island, blind for bliss Of sea that lightens and of wind that thunders; Nor pealed not surely back from deep to steep Reverberate acclamation, steep to deep Inveterately reclaiming and replying Praise, and response applausive; nor the sea, For all the sea-wind's crying, Knew not the song her sister, even as she Thundering, or like her confluent spring-tides brightening, And like her darkness lightening; The song that moved about him silent, now Both soundless wings refolded and refurled On that Promethean brow, Then quivering as for flight that wakes the world. From the roots of the rocks underlying the gulfs that engird it around [_Str._ 8. Was the isle not enkindled with light of him landing, or thrilled not with sound? Yea, surely the sea like a harper laid hand on the shore as a lyre, As the lyre in his own for a birthright of old that was given of his sire, And the hand of the child was put forth on the chords yet alive and aflame From the hand of the God that had wrought it in heaven; and the hand was the same. And the tongue of the child spake, singing; and never a note that he sang, But the strings made answer unstricken, as though for the God they rang. And the eyes of the child shone, lightening; and touched as by life at his nod, They shuddered with music, and quickened as though from the glance of the God. So trembled the heart of the hills and the rocks to receive him, and yearned With desirous delight of his presence and love that beholding him burned. Yea, down through the mighty twin hollows where never the sunlight shall be, Deep sunk under imminent earth, and subdued to the stress of the sea, That feel when the dim week changes by change of their tides in the dark, As the wave sinks under within them, reluctant, removed from its mark, Even there in the terror of twilight in bloom with its blossoms ablush, Did a sense of him touch not the gleam of their flowers with a fierier flush? Though the sun they behold not for ever, yet knew they not over them One Whose soul was the soul of the morning, whose song was the song of the sun? But the secrets inviolate of sunlight in hollows untrodden of day, Shall he dream what are these who beholds not? or he that hath seen, shall he say? For the path is for passage of sea-mews; and he that hath glided and leapt Over sea-grass and sea-rock, alighting as one from a citadel crept