University of Virginia Library

III.4

World-besieging Storm, from horizon heaped and menacing
Rear up the walls of thunder, till they tower
Shattering over earth, and from heart to heart reverberate,
Lancing that bright fear through the ruin-shower!
Revel, Winds, severing the bough of leafy promises
With rages from returning chaos sent!
Mockers and Destroyers, come; here is Man, predestinate
To all your arrows at his bosom bent.
Strip him of his splendours, of his conquests and dominions,
His secure boast to be earth's lord enthroned,
Humble him: he stands forth greater in his nakedness
Than in the wealth and safety that he owned.
He that has so loved peril in all experience,
He that has gone with Sorrow all her way,
Will not now refuse or shrink; prove him to the innermost,
With worse than worst confront him: come what may,
Lo, you awake, O Trumpets of Calamity,
Some fragment of old Darkness in his breast;
Lo, to him fraternal is the stony and the terrible place:
His stricken Genius out of deeps unguessed
Rises up, grappling his reality to reality,
And still the secret in himself explores,
Bound beyond fear, the discovered and discoverer,
And in his own soul touches farthest shores.
Though he be stript of all, Powers from far replenish him,
Powers of the streaming worlds that through him stream.
O throbbing heart, O lifted arms, O tenderness,
O only capable of grief supreme!
O earth for ever mingled with unearthliness
Because the eternal with the brief is twined!
Wonder of breath that is momentary and tremulous
Suffices him who breathes eternal mind.
Vision that dawns beyond knowledge shall deliver him
From all that flattered, threatened, foiled, betrayed.
Lo, having nothing, he is free of all the universe,
And where light is, he enters unafraid.