How shall any way to break the bands of death be found,

Any hand avail to pluck them from that raging tomb?

All the night is great with child of death: no stars above

Show them hope in heaven, no lights from shores ward help on earth.

Is there help or hope to seaward, is there help in love,

Hope in pity, where the ravening hounds of storm make mirth?

Where the light but shows the naked eyeless face of Death

[Pg 166]

Nearer, laughing dumb and grim across the loud live storm?

Not in human heart or hand or speech of human breath,

Surely, nor in saviours found of mortal face or form.

Yet below the light, between the reefs, a skiff shot out

Seems a sea-bird fain to breast and brave the strait fierce pass

Whence the channelled roar of waters driven in raging rout,

Pent and pressed and maddened, speaks their monstrous might and mass.

Thunder heaves and howls about them, lightning leaps and flashes,

Hard at hand, not high in heaven, but close between the walls

Heaped and hollowed of the storms of old, whence reels and crashes

All the rage of all the unbaffled wave that breaks and falls.

Who shall thwart the madness and the gladness of it, laden

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