Page:Poems Blake.djvu/86

II.

What saddening tale of human pride or wrong
 Breaks the dim calm that broods above the sea?
What human passions, pitiless and strong,
 Thus grasped the weapons of eternity?

Or what dark pagan, maddened by the strength
 That marked her faith as born of heaven's high throne,
Cast her beyond him by a full arm's length,
 And left her with the wave and night alone?

I may not say;—enough for me to know
 Heaven sent its peace to ease her passing pain,
Till her rapt soul, uplifted, learned to know
 The waking pulse of joy and life again.

For in the pictured face, though cold and still,
 We read to-day, with hushed and reverent breath,
Of weakness strengthened by the Father's will,
 And victory gathered from the strife of death;