Whym Chow: Flame of Love :: :: University of Virginia Library

O terror laid on all
The pulsing air, O heart
That riseth into waves that cannot fall!
One comes, not to depart!
What is it makes a tunnel of my hall?
Why can no echoes start?
Who cometh like the snow pushed toward a land?

Who cometh like the snow pushed toward a land?
What can the strange power be?
Not the whole mountain-frame of earth, nor band
Of the cold-swaying sea,
Nor yet the ages under Time's Command,
Gray in weird strength as he—
Not sky beyond the range of any star.

Not sky beyond the range of any star—
Nor all these fearful things
In unison like to this Presence are.
Oh, but the bosom clings
To breath, the eyes to light, while from afar,
As come almighty Kings,
Our dead comes back again, the dead, our dead.

The dead comes back again, the dead, our dead,
Brought through the passage in!
O Wonderment, extremity of dread!
No child, nay, none of kin,
No sovereign and no warrior: but instead
Of these, the awe they win,
O Chow, my little Love, thou art come home.

O Chow, my little Love, thou art come home.
No creature in more state
Dead to the haunts of life hath ever come.
And little Love, the great,
And mighty Power, nay, mightier than the dome
Beyond all stars, or than Time's hoariest date,
Or sea or the world's rock hath brought thee home.