In the Bay

I
    Beyond the hollow sunset, ere a star
    Take heart in heaven from eastward, while the west,
    Fulfilled of watery resonance and rest,
    Is as a port with clouds for harbour bar
    To fold the fleet in of the winds from far
    That stir no plume now of the bland sea's breast:II
    Above the soft sweep of the breathless bay
    Southwestward, far past flight of night and day,
    Lower than the sunken sunset sinks, and higher
   Than dawn can freak the front of heaven with fire,
   My thought with eyes and wings made wide makes way
   To find the place of souls that I desire.III

   If any place for any soul there be,
   Disrobed and disentrammelled; if the might
   The fire and force that filled with ardent light
   The souls whose shadow is half the light we see,
   Survive and be suppressed not of the night;
   This hour should show what all day hid from me.IV

   Night knows not, neither is it shown to day,
   By sunlight nor by starlight is it shown,
   Nor to the full moon's eye nor footfall known,
   Their world's untrodden and unkindled way.
   Nor is the breath nor music of it blown
   With sounds of winter or with winds of May.V

   But here, where light and darkness reconciled
   Held earth between them as a weanling child
   Between the balanced hands of death and birth,
   Even as they held the new-born shape of earth
   When first life trembled in her limbs and smiled,
   Here hope might think to find what hope were worth.VI

   Past Hades, past Elysium, past the long
   Slow smooth strong lapse of Lethe--past the toil
   Wherein all souls are taken as a spoil,
   The Stygian web of waters--if your song
   Be quenched not, O our brethren, but be strong
   As ere ye too shook off our temporal coil;VII

   If yet these twain survive your worldly breath,
   Joy trampling sorrow, life devouring death,
   If perfect life possess your life all through
   And like your words your souls be deathless too,
   To-night, of all whom night encompasseth,
   My soul would commune with one soul of you.VIII

   Above the sunset might I see thine eyes
   That were above the sundawn in our skies,
   Son of the songs of morning,--thine that were
   First lights to lighten that rekindling air
   Wherethrough men saw the front of England rise
   And heard thine loudest of the lyre-notes there--IX

   If yet thy fire have not one spark the less,
   O Titan, born of her a Titaness,
   Across the sunrise and the sunset's mark
   Send of thy lyre one sound, thy fire one spark,
   To change this face of our unworthiness,
   Across this hour dividing light from dark.X

   To change this face of our chill time, that hears
   No song like thine of all that crowd its ears,
   Of all its lights that lighten all day long
   Sees none like thy most fleet and fiery sphere's
   Outlightening Sirius--in its twilight throng
    No thunder and no sunrise like thy song. XI

       Hath not the sea-wind swept the sea-line bare
   To pave with stainless fire through stainless air
   A passage for thine heavenlier feet to tread
   Ungrieved of earthly floor-work? hath it spread
   No covering splendid as the sun-god's hair
   To veil or to reveal thy lordlier head?XII

   Hath not the sunset shown across the sea
   A way majestical enough for thee?
   What hour save this should be thine hour--and mine,
   If thou have care of any less divine
   Than thine own soul; if thou take thought of me,
   Marlowe, as all my soul takes thought of thine?XIII

   Before the morn's face as before the sun
   The morning star and evening star are one
   For all men's lands as England. O, if night
   Hang hard upon us,--ere our day take flight,
   Shed thou some comfort from thy day long done
   On us pale children of the latter light!XIV

   For surely, brother and master and lord and king,
   Where'er thy footfall and thy face make spring
   In all souls' eyes that meet thee wheresoe'er,
   And have thy soul for sunshine and sweet air--
   Some late love of thine old live land should cling,
   Some living love of England, round thee there.XV

   Here from her shore across her sunniest sea
   My soul makes question of the sun for thee,
   And waves and beams make answer. When thy feet
   Made her ways flowerier and their flowers more sweet
   With childlike passage of a god to be,
   Like spray these waves cast off her foemen's fleet.XVI

   Like foam they flung it from her, and like weed
   Its wrecks were washed fr