<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341899" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>A Channel Crossing</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Forth from Calais, at dawn of night, when sunset summer on autumn shone,<br> Fared the steamer alert and loud through seas whence only the sun was gone:<br> Soft and sweet as the sky they smiled, and bade man welcome: a dim sweet hour<br> Gleamed and whispered in wind and sea, and heaven was fair as a field in flower,<br> Stars fulfilled the desire of the darkling world as with music: the star-bright air<br> Made the face of the sea, if aught may make the face of the sea, more fair.<br> Whence came change? Was the sweet night weary of rest? What anguish awoke in the dark?<br> Sudden, sublime, the strong storm spake: we heard the thunders as hounds that bark.<br> Lovelier if aught may be lovelier than stars, we saw the lightnings exalt the sky,<br> Living and lustrous and rapturous as love that is born but to quicken and lighten and die.<br> Heaven's own heart at its highest of delight found utterance in music and semblance in fire:<br> Thunder on thunder exulted, rejoicing to live and to satiate the night's desire.<br> And the night was alive and an-hungered of life as a tiger from toils cast free:<br> And a rapture of rage made joyous the spirit and strength of the soul of the sea.<br> All the weight of the wind bore down on it, freighted with death for fraught:<br> And the keen waves kindled and quickened as things transfigured or things distraught.<br> And madness fell on them laughing and leaping; and madness came on the wind:<br> And the might and the light and the darkness of storm were as storm in the heart of Ind.<br> Such glory, such terror, such passion, as lighten and harrow the far fierce East,<br> Rang, shone, spake, shuddered around us: the night was an altar with death for priest.<br> The channel that sunders England from shores where never was man born free<br> Was clothed with the likeness and thrilled with the strength and the wrath of a tropic sea.<br> As a wild steed ramps in rebellion, and rears till it swerves from a backward fall,<br> The strong ship struggled and reared, and her deck was upright as a sheer cliff's wall.<br> Stern and prow plunged under, alternate: a glimpse, a recoil, a breath,<br> And she sprang as the life in a god made man would spring at the throat of death.<br> Three glad hours, and it seemed not an hour of supreme and supernal joy,<br> Filled full with delight that revives in remembrance a sea-bird's heart in a boy.<br> For the central crest of the night was cloud that thundered and flamed, sublime<br> As the splendour and song of the soul everlasting that quickens the pulse of time.<br> The glory beholden of man in a vision, the music of light overheard,<br> The rapture and radiance of battle, the life that abides in the fire of a word,<br> In the midmost heaven enkindled, was manifest far on the face of the sea,<br> And the rage in the roar of the voice of the waters was heard but when heaven breathed free.<br> Far eastward, clear of the covering of cloud, the sky laughed out into light<br> From the rims of the storm to the sea's dark edge with flames that were flowerlike and white.<br> The leaping and luminous blossoms of live sheet lightning that laugh as they fade<br> From the cloud's black base to the black wave's brim rejoiced in the light they made.<br> Far westward, throned in a silent sky, where life was in lustrous tune,<br> Shone, sweeter and surer than morning or evening, the steadfast smile of the moon.<br> The limitless heaven that enshrined them was lovelier than dreams may behold, and deep<br> As life or as death, revealed and transfigured, may shine on the soul through sleep.<br> All glories of toil and of triumph and passion and pride that it yearns to know<br> Bore witness there to the soul of its likeness and kinship, above and below.<br> The joys of the lightnings, the songs of the thunders, the strong sea's labour and rage,<br> Were tokens and signs of the war that is life and is joy for the soul to wage.<br> No thought strikes deeper or higher than the heights and the depths that the night made bare,<br> Illimitable, infinite, awful and joyful, alive in the summit of air-- <br> Air stilled and thrilled by the tempest that thundered between its reign and the sea's,<br> Rebellious, rapturous, and transient as faith or as terror that bows men's knees.<br> No love sees loftier and fairer the form of its godlike vision in dreams<br> Than the world shone then, when the sky and the sea were as love for a breath's length seems--<br> One utterly, mingled and mastering and mastered and laughing with love that subsides<br> As the glad mad night sank panting and satiate with storm, and released the tides.<br> In the dense mid channel the steam-souled ship hung hovering, assailed and withheld<br> As a soul born royal, if life or if death be against it, is thwarted and quelled.<br> As the glories of myriads of glow-worms in lustrous grass on a boundless lawn<br> Were the glories of flames phosphoric that made of the water a light like dawn.<br> A thousand Phosphors, a thousand Hespers, awoke in the churning sea,<br> And the swift soft hiss of them living and dying was clear as a tune could be;<br> As a tune that is played by the fingers of death on the keys of life or of sleep,<br> Audible alway alive in the storm, too fleet for a dream to keep:<br> Too fleet, too sweet for a dream to recover and thought to remember awake:<br> Light subtler and swifter than lightning, that whispers and laughs in the live storm's wake,<br> In the wild bright wake of the storm, in the dense loud heart of the labouring hour,<br> A harvest of stars by the storm's hand reaped, each fair as a star-shaped flower.<br> And sudden and soft as the passing of sleep is the passing of tempest seemed<br> When the light and the sound of it sank, and the glory was gone as a dream half dreamed.<br> The glory, the terror, the passion that made of the midnight a miracle, died,<br> Not slain at a stroke, nor in gradual reluctance abated of power and of pride;<br> With strong swift subsidence, awful as power that is wearied of power upon earth,<br> As a God that were wearied of power upon heaven, and were fain of a new God's birth,<br> The might of the night subsided: the tyranny kindled in darkness fell:<br> And the sea and the sky put off them the rapture and radiance of heaven and of hell.<br> The waters, heaving and hungering at heart, made way, and were wellnigh fain,<br> For the ship that had fought them, and wrestled, and revelled in labour, to cease from her pain.<br> And an end was made of it: only remembrance endures of the glad loud strife;<br> And the sense that a rapture so royal may come not again in the passage of life.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Algernon+Charles+Swinburne">Algernon Charles Swinburne</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341899" data-title="A Channel Crossing de Algernon Charles Swinburne" data-description="Forth from Calais, at dawn of night, when sunset summer on autumn shone, Fared the steamer alert and loud through seas whence only the sun was gone: Soft and sweet as the sky they smiled, and bade man welcome: a dim sweet hour Gleamed and whisp..."></div> </div> </div>

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