Page:Poems and ballads, third series (IA poemsballadsthir00swin).pdf/64

Past many a secure unavailable harbour, and many a loud
stream's mouth,
Past Humber and Tees and Tyne and Tweed, they fly,
scourged on from the south,
And torn by the scourge of the storm-wind that smites
as a harper smites on a lyre,
And consumed of the storm as the sacrifice loved of their
God is consumed with fire,
And devoured of the darkness as men that are slain in
the fires of his love are devoured,
And deflowered of their lives by the storms, as by priests
is the spirit of life deflowered.
For the wind, of its godlike mercy, relents not, and
hounds them ahead to the north,
With English hunters at heel, till now is the herd of them
past the Forth,
All huddled and hurtled seaward; and now need none
wage war upon these,
Nor huntsmen follow the quarry whose fall is the pastime
sought of the seas.