Page:A channel passage and other poems (IA channelpassageot00swinrich).pdf/57

Dark were the shadows around him, and darker the
glories above,
Ere light from beyond them found him, and bade him
for love's sake love.
About him was darkness, and under and over him
darkness: the night
That conceived him and bore him had thunder for
utterance and lightning for light.
The dust of death was the dust of the ways that the
tribes of him trod:
And he knew not if just or unjust were the might of the
mystery of God.
Strange horror and hope, strange faith and unfaith, were
his boon and his bane:
And the God of his trust was the wraith of the soul or
the ghost of it slain.
A curse was on death as on birth, and a Presence that
shone as a sword
Shed menace from heaven upon earth that beheld him,
and hailed him her Lord.