Page:Poems and ballads, third series (IA poemsballadsthir00swin).pdf/65

Day upon day upon day confounds them, with measureless
mists that swell,
With drift of rains everlasting and dense as the fumes of
ascending hell.
The visions of priest and of prophet beholding his
enemies bruised of his rod
Beheld but the likeness of this that is fallen on the faithful,
the friends of God.
Northward, and northward, and northward they stagger
and shudder and swerve and flit,
Dismantled of masts and of yards, with sails by the fangs
of the storm-wind split.
But north of the headland whose name is Wrath, by the
wrath or the ruth of the sea,
They are swept or sustained to the westward, and drive
through the rollers aloof to the lee.
Some strive yet northward for Iceland, and perish: but
some through the storm-hewn straits
That sunder the Shetlands and Orkneys are borne of the
breath which is God's or fate's: