The Wreck Of The Deutschland Part 2

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‘Some find me a sword; some The flange and the rail; flame, Fang, or flood’ goes Death on drum, And storms bugle his fame. But wé dream we are rooted in earth—Dust! 85 Flesh falls within sight of us, we, though our flower the same, Wave with the meadow, forget that there must The sour scythe cringe, and the blear share come.
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On Saturday sailed from Bremen, American-outward-bound, 90 Take settler and seamen, tell men with women, Two hundred souls in the round— O Father, not under thy feathers nor ever as guessing The goal was a shoal, of a fourth the doom to be drowned; Yet did the dark side of the bay of thy blessing 95 Not vault them, the million of rounds of thy mercy not reeve even them in?
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Into the snows she sweeps, Hurling the haven behind, The Deutschland, on Sunday; and so the sky keeps, For the infinite air is unkind, 100 And the sea flint-flake, black-backed in the regular blow, Sitting Eastnortheast, in cursed quarter, the wind; Wiry and white-fiery and whirlwind-swivellèd snow Spins to the widow-making unchilding unfathering deeps.
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She drove in the dark to leeward, 105 She struck—not a reef or a rock But the combs of a smother of sand: night drew her Dead to the Kentish Knock; And she beat the bank down with her bows and the ride of her keel: The breakers rolled on her beam with ruinous shock; 110 And canvas and compass, the whorl and the wheel Idle for ever to waft her or wind her with, these she endured.
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Hope had grown grey hairs, Hope had mourning on, Trenched with tears, carved with cares, 115 Hope was twelve hours gone; And frightful a nightfall folded rueful a day Nor rescue, only rocket and lightship, shone, And lives at last were washing away: To the shrouds they took,—they shook in the hurling and horrible airs. 120
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One stirred from the rigging to save The wild woman-kind below, With a rope’s end round the man, handy and brave— He was pitched to his death at a blow, For all his dreadnought breast and braids of thew: 125 They could tell him for hours, dandled the to and fro Through the cobbled foam-fleece, what could he do With the burl of the fountains of air, buck and the flood of the wave?
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They fought with God’s cold— And they could not and fell to the deck 130 (Crushed them) or water (and drowned them) or rolled With the sea-romp over the wreck. Night roared, with the heart-break hearing a heart-broke rabble, The woman’s wailing, the crying of child without check— Till a lioness arose breasting the babble, 135 A prophetess towered in the tumult, a virginal tongue told.
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Ah, touched in your bower of bone Are you! turned for an exquisite smart, Have you! make words break from me here all alone, Do you!—mother of being in me, heart. 140 O unteachably after evil, but uttering truth, Why, tears! is it? tears; such a melting, a madrigal start! Never-eldering revel and river of youth, What can it be, this glee? the good you have there of your own?
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Sister, a sister calling 145 A master, her master and mine!— And the inboard seas run swirling and hawling; The rash smart sloggering brine Blinds her; but she that weather sees one thing, one; Has one fetch in her: she rears herself to divine 150 Ears, and the call of the tall nun To the men in the tops and the tackle rode over the storm’s brawling.
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She was first of a five and came Of a coifèd sisterhood. (O Deutschland, double a desperate name! 155 O world wide of its good! But Gertrude, lily, and Luther, are two of a town, Christ’s lily and beast of the waste wood: From life’s dawn it is drawn down, Abel is Cain’s brother and breasts they have sucked the same.) 160
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Loathed for a love men knew in them, Banned by the land of their birth, Rhine refused them. Thames would ruin them; Surf, snow, river and earth Gnashed: but thou art above, thou Orion of light; 165 Thy unchancelling poising palms were weighing the worth, Thou martyr-master: in thy sight Storm flakes were scroll-leaved flowers, lily showers—sweet heaven was astrew in them.
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Five! the finding and sake And cipher of suffering Christ. 170 Mark, the mark is of man’s make And the word of it Sacrificed. But he scores it in scarlet himself on his own bespoken, Before-time-taken, dearest prizèd and priced— Stigma, signal, cinquefoil token 175 For lettering of the lamb’s fleece, ruddying of the rose-flake.
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Joy fall to thee, father Francis, Drawn to the Life that died; With the gnarls of the nails in thee, niche of the lance, his Lovescape crucified 180 And seal of his seraph-arrival! and these thy daughters And five-livèd and leavèd favour and pride, Are sisterly sealed in wild waters, To bathe in his fall-gold mercies, to breathe in his all-fire glances.
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Away in the loveable west, 185 On a pastoral forehead of Wales, I was under a roof here, I was at rest, And they the prey of the gales; She to the black-about air, to the breaker, the thickly Falling flakes, to the throng that catches and quails 190 Was calling ‘O Christ, Christ, come quickly’: The cross to her she calls Christ to her, christens her wild-worst Best.
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The majesty! what did she mean? Breathe, arch and original Breath. Is it love in her of the being as her lover had been? 195 Breathe, body of lovely Death. They were else-minded then, altogether, the men Woke thee with a we are perishing in the weather of Gennesareth. Or is it that she cried for the crown then, The keener to come at the comfort for feeling the combating keen? 200
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For how to the heart’s cheering The down-dugged ground-hugged grey Hovers off, the jay-blue heavens appearing Of pied and peeled May! Blue-beating and hoary-glow height; or night, still higher, 205 With belled fire and the moth-soft Milky Way, What by your measure is the heaven of desire, The treasure never eyesight got, nor was ever guessed what for the hearing?
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No, but it was not these. The jading and jar of the cart, 210 Time’s tasking, it is fathers that asking for ease Of the sodden-with-its-sorrowing heart, Not danger, electrical horror; then further it finds The appealing of the Passion is tenderer in prayer apart: Other, I gather, in measure her mind’s 215 Burden, in wind’s burly and beat of endragonèd seas.
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But how shall I … make me room there: Reach me a … Fancy, come faster— Strike you the sight of it? look at it loom there, Thing that she … there then! the Master, 220 Ipse, the only one, Christ, King, Head: He was to cure the extremity where he had cast her; Do, deal, lord it with living and dead; Let him ride, her pride, in his triumph, despatch and have done with his doom there.
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Ah! there was a heart right! 225 There was single eye! Read the unshapeable shock night And knew the who and the why; Wording it how but by him that present and past, Heaven and earth are word of, worded by?— 230 The Simon Peter of a soul! to the blast Tarpeian-fast, but a blown beacon of light.
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Jesu, heart’s light, Jesu, maid’s son, What was the feast followed the night 235 Thou hadst glory of this nun?— Feast of the one woman without stain. For so conceivèd, so to conceive thee is done; But here was heart-throe, birth of a brain, Word, that heard and kept thee and uttered thee outright. 240
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Well, she has thee for the pain, for the Patience; but pity of the rest of them! Heart, go and bleed at a bitterer vein for the Comfortless unconfessed of them— No not uncomforted: lovely-felicitous Providence 245 Finger of a tender of; O of a feathery delicacy, the breast of the Maiden could obey so, be a bell to, ring of it, and Startle the poor sheep back! is the shipwrack then a harvest, does tempest carry the grain for thee?
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I admire thee, master of the tides, Of the Yore-flood, of the year’s fall; 250 The recurb and the recovery of the gulf’s sides, The girth of it and the wharf of it and the wall; Stanching, quenching ocean of a motionable mind; Ground of being, and granite of it: past all Grasp God, throned behind 255 Death with a sovereignty that heeds but hides, bodes but abides;
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With a mercy that outrides The all of water, an ark For the listener; for the lingerer with a love glides Lower than death and the dark; 260 A vein for the visiting of the past-prayer, pent in prison, The-last-breath penitent spirits—the uttermost mark Our passion-plungèd giant risen, The Christ of the Father compassionate, fetched in the storm of his strides.
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Now burn, new born to the world, 265 Doubled-naturèd name, The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame, Mid-numbered He in three of the thunder-throne! Not a dooms-day dazzle in his coming nor dark as he came; 270 Kind, but royally reclaiming his own; A released shower, let flash to the shire, not a lightning of fire hard-hurled.
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Dame, at our door Drowned, and among our shoals, Remember us in the roads, the heaven-haven of the Reward: 275 Our King back, oh, upon English souls! Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east, More brightening her, rare-dear Britain, as his reign rolls, Pride, rose, prince, hero of us, high-priest, Our hearts’ charity’s hearth’s fire, our thoughts’ chivalry’s throng’s Lord.