Page:Tristram of Lyonesse and other poems (IA tristramoflyonesswinrich).pdf/200

How might man endure, being mortal yet, O thou most highest, to hear?
How record, being born of woman? Surely not thy Furies near,
Surely this beheld, this only, blasted hearts to death with fear.
Not the hissing hair, nor flakes of blood that oozed from eyes of fire,
Nor the snort of savage sleep that snuffed the hungering heart’s desire
Where the hunted prey found hardly space and harbour to respire;
She whose likeness called them—‘Sleep ye, ho? what need of you that sleep?’
(Ah, what need indeed, where she was, of all shapes that night may keep
Hidden dark as death and deeper than men’s dreams of hell are deep?)
She the murderess of her husband, she the huntress of her son,
More than ye was she, the shadow that no God withstands but one,
Wisdom equal-eyed and stronger and more splendid than the sun.
Yea, no God may stand betwixt us and the shadows of our deeds,
Nor the light of dreams that lighten darkness, nor the prayer that pleads,
But the wisdom equal-souled with heaven, the light alone that leads.