The Last Poems of Richard Watson Dixon ... Selected and Edited by Robert Bridges: With a Preface by M. E. Coleridge |
 |
ODE ON THE DEATH OF DICKENS |
 | The Last Poems of Richard Watson Dixon |  |
32
ODE ON THE DEATH OF DICKENS
Beneath the invisible scourge
Of the south to foam upleaps the wave:
The tides hasten: the blasts urge
From the depth of their grey mysterious cave,
The white precipitate clouds, that seem made
More slowly to wander the sky, like a herd
Of deep-uddered cows hotly bayed
By a fierce dog beyond their own pace: but the bird
Turns seaward a sun-smitten wing;
For the storm and the calm are there,
That the blast and the sunbeam fling,
That contend in the gleam-shifting air.
Of the south to foam upleaps the wave:
The tides hasten: the blasts urge
From the depth of their grey mysterious cave,
The white precipitate clouds, that seem made
More slowly to wander the sky, like a herd
Of deep-uddered cows hotly bayed
By a fierce dog beyond their own pace: but the bird
Turns seaward a sun-smitten wing;
For the storm and the calm are there,
That the blast and the sunbeam fling,
That contend in the gleam-shifting air.
Spirit, the thought of thee
Shall lend to us thine eyes,
Thy season; see, oh, see
From the howling summer skies
How wintry the sounds that come!
They shake the pink sea-thrift,
They shake the heathery bloom
That afar the sandhills lift.
Shall lend to us thine eyes,
Thy season; see, oh, see
From the howling summer skies
How wintry the sounds that come!
They shake the pink sea-thrift,
They shake the heathery bloom
That afar the sandhills lift.
Saidst thou not how near
Sorrow and joy, and peace and strife,
Darkness and light, the smile, the tear,
Death and life?
Sorrow and joy, and peace and strife,
Darkness and light, the smile, the tear,
Death and life?
| The Last Poems of Richard Watson Dixon | |