# A Channel Passage and Other Poems/The Lake of Gaube

Previously printed in The Bookman, October 1899, pp. 4—5.
THE LAKE OF GAUBE
The sun is lord and god, sublime, serene, And sovereign on the mountains: earth and air Lie prone in passion, blind with bliss unseen By force of sight and might of rapture, fair As dreams that die and know not what they were. The lawns, the gorges, and the peaks, are one Glad glory, thrilled with sense of unison In strong compulsive silence of the sun.
Flowers dense and keen as midnight stars aflame And living things of light like flames in flower That glance and flash as though no hand might tame Lightnings whose life outshone their stormlit hour And played and laughed on earth, with all their power Gone, and with all their joy of life made long
And harmless as the lightning life of song,
Shine sweet like stars when darkness feels them strong.
The deep mild purple flaked with moonbright gold
That makes the scales seem flowers of hardened light, The flamelike tongue, the feet that noon leaves cold,
The kindly trust in man, when once the sight Grew less than strange, and faith bade fear take flight,
Outlive the little harmless life that shone
And gladdened eyes that loved it, and was gone
Ere love might fear that fear had looked thereon.
Fear held the bright thing hateful, even as fear,
Whose name is one with hate and horror, saith
That heaven, the dark deep heaven of water near,
Is deadly deep as hell and dark as death.
The rapturous plunge that quickens blood and breath
With pause more sweet than passion, ere they strive To raise again the limbs that yet would dive
Deeper, should there have slain the soul alive.
As the bright salamander in fire of the noonshine exults
and is glad of his day,
The spirit that quickens my body rejoices to pass from
the sunlight away, To pass from the glow of the mountainous flowerage, the
high multitudinous bloom,
Far down through the fathomless night of the water, the
gladness of silence and gloom.
Death-dark and delicious as death in the dream of a lover
and dreamer may be,
It clasps and encompasses body and soul with delight to
be living and free: Free utterly now, though the freedom endure but the
space of a perilous breath,
And living, though girdled about with the darkness and
coldness and strangeness of death: Each limb and each pulse of the body rejoicing, each
nerve of the spirit at rest,
All sense of the soul's life rapture, a passionate peace in
its blindness blest.
So plunges the downward swimmer, embraced of the
water unfathomed of man, The darkness unplummeted, icier than seas in midwinter,
for blessing or ban; And swiftly and sweetly, when strength and breath fall
short, and the dive is done,
Shoots up as a shaft from the dark depth shot, sped
straight into sight of the sun;
And sheer through the snow-soft water, more dark than
the roof of the pines above,
Strikes forth, and is glad as a bird whose flight is impelled
and sustained of love.
As a sea-mew's love of the sea-wind breasted and ridden
for rapture's sake Is the love of his body and soul for the darkling delight
of the soundless lake: As the silent speed of a dream too living to live for a
thought's space more
Is the flight of his limbs through the still strong chill of
the darkness from shore to shore.
Might life be as this is and death be as life that casts off
time as a robe, The likeness of infinite heaven were a symbol revealed of
the lake of Gaube.
Whose thought has fathomed and measured
The darkness of life and of death,
The secret within them treasured,
The spirit that is not breath? Whose vision has yet beholden
The splendour of death and of life? Though sunset as dawn be golden,
Is the word of them peace, not strife?
Deep silence answers: the glory
We dream of may be but a dream,
And the sun of the soul wax hoary
As ashes that show not a gleam.
But well shall it be with us ever
Who drive through the darkness here
If the soul that we live by never,
For aught that a lie saith, fear.