Nor less the weight and worth [_Ep._ 10. Found even of love on earth To wash all stain of tears and sins away, On dying lips alit That living knew not it, In the winged shape of song with death to play: To warm young children with its wings, And try with fire the heart elect for godlike things. 400 For all worst wants of all most miserable [_Str._ 11. With divine hands to deal All balms and herbs that heal, Among all woes whereunder poor men dwell Our Master sent his servant Love, to be On earth his witness; but the strange deep sea, Mother of life and death inextricate, What work should Love do there, to war with fate? Yet there must Love too keep At heart of the eyeless deep 410 Watch, and wage war wide-eyed with all its wonders, Lower than the lightnings of its waves, and thunders Of seas less monstrous than the births they bred; Keep high there heart and head, And conquer: then for prize of all toils past Feel the sea close them in again at last. A day of direr doom arisen thereafter [_Ant._ 11. With cloud and fire in strife Lightens and darkens life Round one by man's hand masked with living laughter, 420 A man by men bemonstered, but by love, Watched with blind eyes as of a wakeful dove, And wooed by lust, that in her rosy den As fire on flesh feeds on the souls of men, To take the intense impure Burnt-offering of her lure, Divine and dark and bright and naked, strange With ravenous thirst of life reversed and change, As though the very heaven should shrivel and swell With hunger after hell, 430 Run mad for dear damnation, and desire To feel its light thrilled through with stings of fire. Above a windier sea, [_Ep._ 11. The glory of Ninety-three Fills heaven with blood-red and with rose-red beams That earth beholding grows Herself one burning rose Flagrant and fragrant with strange deeds and dreams, Dreams dyed as love's own flower, and deeds Stained as with love's own life-blood, that for love's sake bleeds. 440