A Double Ballad of August

All Afric, winged with death and fire,Pants in our pleasant English air.Each blade of grass is tense as wire,And all the wood's loose trembling hairStark in the broad and breathless glareOf hours whose touch wastes herb and tree.This bright sharp death shines everywhere;Life yearns for solace toward the sea.

Earth seems a corpse upon the pyre;The sun, a scourge for slaves to bear.All power to fear, all keen desire,Lies dead as dreams of days that wereBefore the new-born world lay bareIn heaven's wide eye, whereunder weLie breathless till the season spare:Life yearns for solace toward the sea.

Fierce hours, with ravening fangs that tireOn spirit and sense, divide and shareThe throbs of thoughts that scarce respire,The throes of dreams that scarce forbearOne mute immitigable prayerFor cold perpetual sleep to beShed snowlike on the sense of care.Life yearns for solace toward the sea.

The dust of ways where men suspireSeems even the dust of death's dim lair.But though the feverish days be direThe sea-wind rears and cheers its fairBlithe broods of babes that here and thereMake the sands laugh and glow for gleeWith gladder flowers than gardens wear.Life yearns for solace toward the sea.

The music dies not off the lyreThat lets no soul alive despair.Sleep strikes not dumb the breathless choirOf waves whose note bids sorrow spare.As glad they sound, as fast they fare,As when fate's word first set them freeAnd gave them light and night to wear.Life yearns for solace toward the sea.

For there, though night and day conspireTo compass round with toil and snareAnd changeless whirl of change, whose gyreDraws all things deathwards unaware,The spirit of life they scourge and scare,Wild waves that follow on waves that fleeLaugh, knowing that yet, though earth despair,Life yearns for solace toward the sea.