The Ballad of St. Barbara and other verses/The Red Sea
THE RED SEA
Our souls shall be LeviathansIn purple seas of wineWhen drunkenness is dead with death,And drink is all divine;Learning in those immortal vatsWhat mortal vineyards mean;For only in heaven we shall knowHow happy we have been.
Like clouds that wallow in the windBe free to drift and drink;Tower without insolence when we rise,Without surrender sink:Dreams dizzy and crazy we shall knowAnd have no need to writeOur blameless blasphemies of praise,Our nightmares of delight.
For so in such misshapen shapeThe vision came to me,Where such titanian dolphins darkRoll in a sunset sea:Dark with dense colours, strange and strong As terrible true love,Haloed like fish in phospher lightThe holy monsters move.
Measure is here and law, to learn,When honour rules it so,To lift the glass and lay it downOr break the glass and go.But when the world's New Deluge boilsFrom the New Noah's vine,Our souls shall be LeviathansIn sanguine seas of wine.