The Spirit Of Storm Poem by Roden Berkeley Wriothesley Noel

Hail, royal ocean! in thy presence-chamber
Arrived, I feel thy deep abounding life
Transfused into my blood, replenishing
My dwindling store; alone, and at thy feet,
Dear as are human hearts, I am at home!
Sheltered within a cleft of the tall crag,
Granite of many delicate tints, I hear
The wind's vast voice make chorus with the sea's,
Broken upon grim, dark rock-teeth below,
Ruins of the mainland; neighbouring which the shoals
Are green as beryl, wine-stained with the weed
Of stone submerged; one wrinkled indigo
Watery wastes aloof from shore, inlaid
With devious lines, like branching mercury.
The groundswell, sullen heaving, shows the sea
Perturbed by rumours of far water-war.
Atlantic reigns immeasurable, alone,
Far as the weary wandering eyes can range,
Save for one ghostlike, mist-enshrouded isle
There in the offing, and more nigh at hand,
Yon brown sail of the bark that brought me hither,
And bears dear comrades, great-limbed fishermen,
Whose grave reserve derives from the stern sea.
But westward from my lair the crags are shattered
Into the semblance of a palace-fort,
Or temple hypæthral, tower and battlement,
Pinnacle, buttress, gurgoyled arch and spire.
Chasms yawn between twin walls; one longs to know
Where, and how far, into the mountain heart
They labyrinthine wander; one would fain
Ask of the restless surge, or the wild bird,
Who are made free of them, who wander ever
Unchallenged in and out the sombre halls,
And corridors roofed over with wan cloud,
Ceiled with the storm-drift! - Hurrying vapours gleam
Anon with slant pale shafts from the veiled sun,
Watery rays, that faintly fitful pour
A ruffled silver lustre on the deep,
Irradiating the white wings of mews,
That hover o'er the abysses; but more bright
And warm this ardent beam from forth my heart,
That blesseth and illumineth with love,
Beloved birds! your multitudinous cry,
Music I dearly cherish; far inland
Erewhile I heard the wail of one of you
Imprisoned; mine eyes melted; for there flashed,
As though revealed in a dark night by lightning,
Flashed unaware upon my sense within,
The vision of the glory of the sea!
Ye weave delightful motions in the air,
Passing, repassing; call to one another,
And cherish in the abysses your brown young.
Now one alights upon the bounding wave
A moment; now he cleaves the darkling air.
How the unfettered sweep of his poised pinion
Vies in majestic freedom with the fall
Of a blown billow in mid-ocean, driven,
Fierce-hounded by the blast! the roller bows
With large, deliberate, imperial bend
Of haughty crest, and massy-muscled neck,
Neck clothed with thunder, as the Roman fell,
Who in the Curia, at the feet of Pompey,
By treachery struck, fell, royal-robed, a king.
So swings, so falls, the Atlantic wave to ruin,
Smitten by immense vans of the strong south-west;
For all is noble and grand about the sea.
O hymn sublime, confounded, infinite
Of Tempest, how the chaos in my soul
Responds to your appeal, and drifts with the cloud!
I too am worn with many moods at war,
Wind thwarting tide; stern duty, passion, love,
Wrestle while, unresolved to harmony,
They urge me blindly, violent, confused.
The old-world order passeth, and the new
Delaying dawns, one crimson, loud with voices
We know not, with wild wars in earth and heaven;
The fountains of the great Deep are broken up,
Threatening deluge; our firm earth goes under;
Even as well-beloved familiar stars
Beneath the dusk horizon disappear
For him who journeys over alien seas,
So the ideals of our childhood change;
And as for such lone wanderers there rise
Clear constellations all unknown, for us
Ideas undivined of common weal;
New duties are the children of new needs,
And wider wants; yet in the onward way
Stand venerable godlike forms opposed,
Reverend from usage and dear memory.
Young-faced ideals, rosy like the dawn,
Beckoning promise joy, then eagerly
We hurtle old familiars, while we wound
Hearts well beloved, responsive to their call,
And full-mouthed ardours of their warm embrace.
Then Conscience bleeds, for Virtue shocks with Virtue
And sweet Affection, on the embattled plain,
While Passion raving more embroils the strife.
And what is duty, what is only pleasure,
In the uncertain glimmer who can tell?
Tumultuous conflicts in the elements
Have counterparts more terrible within;
Those rend the body, these lay waste the soul.
One sees his brethren crushed to earth and maimed,
Tortured, and slowly ground to powder, starved,
Harried by hard Vicissitude, or Man
More cruel; then he questions, doubts, denies
The omnipotent God of justice and of love,
To whom he lifted childish hands in prayer,
Taught by a sainted mother; whom she trusted
Through a long life, and, dying, leaned upon.
We may not find the wholly excellent
In frail mortality; we vainly seek
Or in ourselves, or others for the type,
Which hides within the Heart of the Most High,-
Foundation-stone of this inferior sphere.
More loudly roars the tempest in my soul!
For all the creeds make shipwreck on grim reefs
Of iron Fact before mine eyes; no charts
Of olden time have laid them down; discovered
But yesterday, the ravening surge for prey
Claims the pale crews, who have embarked their all
On such frail planks, firm Faith, aspiring Hope,
High confidence that all will yet be well.
Sheltered a little in the rude cliff-cleft,
I sit and hear the turmoil of the storm,
Where strange small fissures in the lofty crag
Suggest dwarf homes of some weird troglodyte,
Or dim cave-tombs of a long buried race;
While round white boulders near high-water mark
Lie under; rain flings full athwart the stone.
I send my spirit adrift upon the storm,
Careering along the triumph of the blast,
Exultant! well I know the living God,
God the creator, for destroyer too;
Who purifies by hurricane, evolves
From birth-throes of rebellion, fraught with fear,
Perplexity and pain, the common weal,
Raised to a higher excellence: wise measures,
With blind experiment, crude theory
Of men who deem that they initiate,
Yea, feel in them the mystical free-will,
Though whirled in broad winds of æonian motion,
Wheeled in predestined orbits round their sun,
All issue in the nobler type of Man.
Lo! the World-Soul commandeth to emerge
From dead, resolved, more simple forms the higher
Through pain, defect, death, folly, sorrow, sin,
Compelleth all to be themselves, through all.
From thee, O mystic Mother, deeply dark,
From thee, O mother Nature, impulse floweth,
Urging mankind to launch, like wintering bird,
Upon the unknown dim airs, by faith to find
Fair undiscovered realms beyond the dawn!
From thee the whisper, never disobeyed,
'Advance a pace into the Infinite;
Claim young dominions from the formless Deep!'
For Man is child of Nature; on her breast
He lieth; she feeds him; body feeds and mind
From her more large, her all-involving soul.
Change wells from dark unfathomable Founts
Of Love and Wisdom other, more than ours;
Ours a poor rill from these; and therefore we
Must fail to comprehend them; yet we know
Wisdom and Love are by the Antagonist,
Absorbed, assimilated in far worlds
Beyond our knowledge; though we travel thither.
But who of us that loved would murder one
Child by slow torture? worse the Highest doth
Through Man, through Nature! or say that he permits,
Who could prevent! nay, freely choose your horn!
Yet Reason proves Intelligence supreme;
Not Force; nor Chance; unfathomable then
That all-wise Will, that moral character
By the plumb-line of our intelligence.
I fling my heart abroad on waves of pleasure,
For pleasure is a very friend of man;
And yet would moderate, would guide my course,
A calm, strong swimmer; with a modern mind
Float in the turbulence of revolution,
Challenge outworn, intolerable Wrong,
That may have been for olden times fair Right,
And still, amid the clash of swords and sounds,
Forehear, enraptured, heavenly harmonies;
In tattered, streaming banners of the cloud,
Marching to battle, would divine, foreknow
The vision of the firmly founded State,
The calm, eternal City of the Lord . . .
. . . Huge purple phantoms, ash-pale wings, wan, wide,
Are marshalled as for conflict; and they move
Momently changing their weird outline; deep
Grows a far thunder; lo! a sudden glare
Within them tells of angers; while the main
Reflects pearl, Tyrian dyes, chalcedony,
And opal, from the interspaces, clear
A moment, shining, delicately veiled.
The peoples now begin to reach warm hands
Of fellowship athwart the estranging bounds
Of sea and land, for mutual defence
Against the common tyrant, who can crush
Them jealous, disunited, one by one.
For mutual service are the countries linked
By thrilling nerves electric; how they flash
With human feeling, swift intelligence!
While great fire-breathing vessels, throbbing trains,
Hurry the many-languaged throngs from home,
With bales of produce for exchange, fair wrought
By whirling-limbed machines; thus arteries
Are highways for the transport of supplies
To every several organ; and the frame
Yields to imaginative informing thought,
That moulds a many-functioned manifold
Into one body from an embryo.
Confusion reigns for eyes that only view
Cells moving blindly through a tiny tract
Of tissue, seeming at cross-purposes;
And so the Race, through varying minds and wills,
And clashing ends of personality,
Grows to one Body, after that fair Type,
In the eternal mind of the Most High.

For me, I would be faithful, point the way
To heights communing with ethereal worlds,
Though I myself should stumble on the spurs
Far under; yet in face of all their clamour
Would save the Good uninjured; but the Ark
Is God's, not mine; the whole wide world His own,
How should He lose one single creature in it?
All are in Him, and He abides in all.
Will not the Soul, in Her immortal flight
Along the ages, change Her loss to gain?
But Virtue pushes from Her sepal-sheath,
Proving a prison, though it sheltered well;
And in Her alien habit of the flower
Men may mistake Her for Her fallen fair sister.

I, when I dared presumptuous to ascend
The perilous heights of contemplation, left
Void windows of the outer sense; but now
Keen glances filled them; gazing, I beheld
The Empyrean wholly clear of cloud,
All azure, save for what appeared the wing
Of a great Angel, guardian over all,
Plumy, and soft, and full-irradiate,
Reaching athwart wide heaven; until it grew
To some celestial armour, like chain-mail;
Only the links were tender down, with blue
Between the interstices; mild ocean under
Mirrored blue air, and alabaster cloud;
It seemed as calm indeed as when of old
One stilled the angry waves on Galilee!
And all the storm was hushed within my heart.