Suddenly there came to me The music of a mighty sea That on a bare and iron shore Thundered with a deeper roar Than all the tides that leap and run With us below the real sun: Because the place was far away, Above, beyond our homely day, Neighbouring close the frozen clime Where out of all the woods of time, Amid the frightful seraphim The fierce, cold eyes of Godhead gleam, Revolving hate and misery And wars and famines yet to be. And in my dreams I stood alone Upon a shelf of weedy stone, And saw before my shrinking eyes The dark, enormous breakers rise, And hover and fall with deafening thunder Of thwarted foam that echoed under The ledge, through many a cavern drear, With hollow sounds of wintry fear. And through the waters waste and grey, Thick-strown for many a league away, Out of the toiling sea arose Many a face and form of those Thin, elemental people dear Who live beyond our heavy sphere. And all at once from far and near, They all held out their arms to me, Crying in their melody, "Leap in! Leap in and take thy fill Of all the cosmic good and ill, Be as the Living ones that know Enormous joy, enormous woe, Pain beyond thought and fiery bliss: For all thy study hunted this, On wings of magic to arise, And wash from off thy filmed eyes The cloud of cold mortality, To find the real life and be As are the children of the deep! Be bold and dare the glorious leap, Or to thy shame, go, slink again Back to the narrow ways of men." So all these mocked me as I stood Striving to wake because I feared the flood. XXIII. Alexandrines There is a house that most of all on earth I hate. Though I have passed through many sorrows and have been In bloody fields, sad seas, and countries desolate, Yet most I fear that empty house where the grasses green Grow in the silent court the gaping flags between, And down the moss-grown paths and terrace no man treads Where the old, old weeds rise deep on the waste garden beds. Like eyes of one long dead the empty windows stare And I fear to cross the garden, I fear to linger there, For in that house I know a little, silent room Where Someone's always waiting, waiting in the gloom To draw me with an evil eye, and hold me fast-- Yet thither doom will drive me and He will win at last. XXIV. In Praise of Solid People Thank God that there are solid folk Who water flowers and roll the lawn, And sit an sew and talk and smoke, And snore all through the summer dawn. Who pass untroubled nights and days Full-fed and sleepily content, Rejoicing in each other's praise, Respectable and innocent.