Page:A channel passage and other poems (IA channelpassageot00swinrich).pdf/26

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.