# Astrophel and Other Poems/Loch Torridon

First published (accompanied by three illustrations by J. MacWhirter, A.R.A.) in The Magazine of Art, January 1890, pp. 70-77.
LOCH TORRIDON.
To E. H.
The dawn of night more fair than morning rose, Stars hurrying forth on stars, as snows on snows Haste when the wind and winter bid them speed. Vague miles of moorland road behind us lay Scarce traversed ere the day Sank, and the sun forsook us at our need, Belated. Where we thought to have rested, rest Was none; for soft Maree's dim quivering breast, Bound round with gracious inland girth of green And fearless of the wild wave-wandering West, Shone shelterless for strangers; and unseen The goal before us lay Of all our blithe and strange and strenuous day.
For when the northering road faced westward—when The dark sharp sudden gorge dropped seaward—then, Beneath the stars, between the steeps, the track We followed, lighted not of moon or sun, And plunging whither none Might guess, while heaven and earth were hoar and black, Seemed even the dim still pass whence none turns back: And through the twilight leftward of the way, And down the dark, with many a laugh and leap, The light blithe hill-streams shone from scaur to steep In glittering pride of play; And ever while the night grew great and deep We felt but saw not what the hills would keep Sacred awhile from sense of moon or star; And full and far Beneath us, sweet and strange as heaven may be, The sea.
The very sea: no mountain-moulded lake Whose fluctuant shapeliness is fain to take
Shape from the steadfast shore that rules it round, And only from the storms a casual sound: The sea, that harbours in her heart sublime The supreme heart of music deep as time, And in her spirit strong The spirit of all imaginable song.
Not a whisper or lisp from the waters: the skies were
not silenter. Peace Was between them; a passionless rapture of respite as
soft as release. Not a sound, but a sense that possessed and pervaded
with patient delight The soul and the body, clothed round with the comfort
of limitless night. Night infinite, living, adorable, loved of the land and
the sea: Night, mother of mercies, who saith to the spirits in
prison, Be free.
And softer than dewfall, and kindlier than starlight, and
keener than wine, Came round us the fragrance of waters, the life of the
breath of the brine. We saw not, we heard not, the face or the voice of the
waters: we knew By the darkling delight of the wind as the sense of the
sea in it grew, By the pulse of the darkness about us enkindled and
quickened, that here, Unseen and unheard of us, surely the goal we had faith
in was near. A silence diviner than music, a darkness diviner than light, Fulfilled as from heaven with a measureless comfort the
measure of night.
But never a roof for shelter And never a sign for guide Rose doubtful or visible: only And hardly and gladly we heard
The soft waves whisper and welter, Subdued, and allured to subside, By the mild night's magic: the lonely Sweet silence was soothed, not stirred, By the noiseless noise of the gleaming Glad ripples, that played and sighed, Kissed, laughed, recoiled, and relented, Whispered, flickered, and fled. No season was this for dreaming How oft, with a stormier tide, Had the wrath of the winds been vented On sons of the tribes long dead: The tribes whom time, and the changes Of things, and the stress of doom, Have erased and effaced; forgotten As wrecks or weeds of the shore In sight of the stern hill-ranges That hardly may change their gloom When the fruits of the years wax rotten And the seed of them springs no more.
For the dim strait footway dividing The waters that breathed below Led safe to the kindliest of shelters That ever awoke into light: And still in remembrance abiding Broods over the stars that glow And the water that eddies and welters The passionate peace of the night.
All night long, in the world of sleep, Skies and waters were soft and deep: Shadow clothed them, and silence made Soundless music of dream and shade: All above us, the livelong night, Shadow, kindled with sense of light; All around us, the brief night long, Silence, laden with sense of song. Stars and mountains without, we knew, Watched and waited, the soft night through:
All unseen, but divined and dear, Thrilled the touch of the sea's breath near: All unheard, but alive like sound, Throbbed the sense of the sea's life round: Round us, near us, in depth and height, Soft as darkness and keen as light.
And the dawn leapt in at my casement: and there, as I
rose, at my feet No waves of the landlocked waters, no lake submissive
and sweet, Soft slave of the lordly seasons, whose breath may loose
it or freeze; But to left and to right and ahead was the ripple whose
pulse is the sea's. From the gorge we had travelled by starlight the sunrise,
winged and aflame, Shone large on the live wide wavelets that shuddered
with joy as it came;
As it came and caressed and possessed them, till panting
and laughing with light From mountain to mountain the water was kindled and
stung to delight. And the grey gaunt heights that embraced and constrained
and compelled it were glad, And the rampart of rock, stark naked, that thwarted and
barred it, was clad With a stern grey splendour of sunrise: and scarce had
I sprung to the sea When the dawn and the water were wedded, the hills
and the sky set free. The chain of the night was broken: the waves that
embraced me and smiled And flickered and fawned in the sunlight,
alive, unafraid, undefiled, Were sweeter to swim in than air, though fulfilled with
the mounting morn, Could be for the birds whose triumph rejoiced that a
day was born.
And a day was arisen indeed for us. Years and the
changes of years Clothed round with their joys and their sorrows, and
dead as their hopes and their fears, Lie noteless and nameless, unlit by remembrance or
record of days Worth wonder or memory, or cursing or blessing, or
passion or praise, Between us who live and forget not, but yearn with
delight in it yet, And the day we forget not, and never may live and may
think to forget. And the years that were kindlier and fairer, and kindled
with pleasures as keen, Have eclipsed not with lights or with shadows the light
on the face of it seen. For softly and surely, as nearer the boat that we gazed
from drew, The face of the precipice opened and bade us as birds
pass through,
And the bark shot sheer to the sea through the strait of
the sharp steep cleft, The portal that opens with imminent rampires to right
and to left, Sublime as the sky they darken and strange as a spell- struck dream, On the world unconfined of the mountains, the reign of
the sea supreme, The kingdom of westward waters, wherein when we
swam we knew The waves that we clove were boundless, the wind on
our brows that blew Had swept no land and no lake, and had warred not on
tower or on tree, But came on us hard out of heaven, and alive with the
soul of the sea.
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