Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE WRECK OF THE 'STELLA', by NEWMAN HOWARD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE WRECK OF THE 'STELLA', by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Easter comes like the gleam of a dawn that delivers the slave
Last Line: For great is the empire of earth, more great the command of the soul.
Subject(s): Earth; Easter; Holidays; Love; Tears; Time; World; The Resurrection


EASTER comes like the gleam of a dawn that delivers the slave,
The drudge of the mill that grinds for the riches of ultimate Rome,
And sheds its light on the desk, and bids him arise from the grave
To a glimpse of the sailing cloud and the sea in a gallop of foam,
Round an isle where the daffodils droop, and dream of the blue of the wave,
And the cormorants plunge and float, plumed with a mermaid's comb.

But twice in the toilsome year, twice only the golden chance
To inhale the scent of the brine, where the bells of the foam are adrift,
To watch the frolic of waves, the whirl and the bacchanal dance,
From rocks aflame with the gorse, ablush with the pink of the thrift:
But twice in the toilsome year, sea-begotten, the golden chance,
The gap in the gloom of our days, and the glow of the sun in the rift.

Our mother, the ocean calls; we sail, and the wife to her man
Clings, and she whispers, "Beloved, for us together alone
A honeymoon comes at last, like the days when our love began;"
And feels for his hand and thrills, as it closes upon her own:
For throbbing and warm are our hearts, though the days of our life are a span,
The rocks lie out in the deep, the wind is a weariful moan,

And the cold waves wash at the keel and we sail to the sound of a sob;
For the witch of the fog sits perched, and brews her kettle, and peers
O'er the oily plain of the sea, and the steam rolls off from the hob,
And the moan is a babble and laugh as the fog-witch listens and hears
The throb of the fated ship, whose burden is hearts that throb,
And she knows that the brine of the sea will swallow the salt of their tears.

But twice in the toilsome year, twice only the joy betides
That beats in our hearts to-day, as the ship ploughs on through the gloom,
Mightily furrows the flood, and hurls from her flanks as she rides
Foam eddies. . . . But see! On the port! What ominous fastnesses loom?
A shout! A crash! We have struck! The Casquets are ripping our sides!
Thrice shudders the monster, and reels, a live thing smitten with doom.

Her ribs are cracking and ground by the old leviathan's teeth,
Sucked in by the lips of the sea whose laughter we sought like balm;
Yet we who are palpitant, frail, our lives sustained on a breath,
Whose pity and passion and praise sob out like the sound of a psalm, --
We behold around us the flood, the lithe snake hungry for death,
We possess our spirits in peace, we clasp our hands and are calm.

Now hail and farewell unto him who heard from the vessel a groan:
"My daughter! she only is left!" -- a voice from the fountain of tears,
Who sprang from the succouring boat, gave place to a maiden unknown,
Then sank, as a star on a hill gleams golden and then disappears:
To him is no dirge and no tomb, no name engraven on stone,
But the tomb and the dirge of the deep for a grandeur more than the spheres.

To her, too, hail and farewell, whom the strangling terror, the grave
Unmasked, as in daytime the moon through a cavern of darkness will shine:
A hundred took life from her hands, yet one there was left to save:
She drew the belt from her breast: "A mightier Saviour is mine:
Take this;" then knelt on the deck, and kneeling sank in the wave:
Sweet saint, O hail and farewell! We too would kneel at your shrine.

But the fog-witch broods on the deep; and Doubt by the altar of life:
"The hearts of your brave are quenched, -- hissed out in the sea like a spark:
A moan, a gurgle, a calm; nor ever a sign of their strife;
A cry gone up to the heavens, and none in the heavens to hark;
But woe for the loved ye have left, an ache in the breast of the wife,
The light of the honeymoon gone, and evermore infinite dark."

* * * * * * *

A nightingale took her love, more sweet than the chiming of bells,
Into her throat and sang, -- and the sea drew murmurous breath, --
A song that gave faith unto fear, and hope to the wild farewells,
A fragrance flung to the night, a chant of the victor's wreath:
"O rest in the Lord!" she sang, and to meadows of asphodels
The dying floated in dreams, buoyed up by an Arm beneath.

So Easter dawned on the sea, and the day of the toiler was sped:
Seeking for sunlight and joy he fell upon silence and rest;
He wove dream-garlands of flowers: they turned to thorns on his head;
Our mother, the ocean, called: he came and was slain on her breast.
But a song rose up on the waves, and a light on the land was shed,
That shone and sang from the soul of the victor Isles of the West:

Yea, hearken all nations unborn, all peoples and aeons of Time!
We Britons make boast we are great, but not by the lands we control,
Though they be the third of the Earth; but for this: that no ocean or clime
But has witnessed us calm in a wreck, self-effacing and fearless, and whole,
First succouring women and young: yea in this is the Briton sublime;
For great is the empire of Earth, more great the command of the soul.





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