(Written in the Hut at Morwenstow)
O Spirit, where art thou fled
Thro’ the deeps of air and sea?
Wilt thou not return from the dead
To be one mortal hour with me?
I gaze from thy crag-hewn seat
O’er the spreading, limitless main,
And the deep foam-thunders beat
At their rocky bars in vain.
The land still wars with the deep,
And the storm sweeps valley and hill:
But the dead rise not yet from their sleep,
And the stormy Spirit is still.
Will the dead rise up from the past
When the dark gates open to me?
Shall I greet thee, O Spirit at last
On the verge of that vaster sea?
* * * * *
From The Life and Letters of R. S. Hawker, edited by C. E. Byles, (p. 655).
Charles Edward Byles (1873 – ? ) married Hawker’s second daughter, Rosalind. In addition to The Life and Letters he also edited Stones Broken From the Rocks: Extracts From the Manuscript Notebooks of R. S. Hawker and new editions of Cornish Ballads & Other Poems and Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall. A journalist and poet he worked as sub-editor on The Illustrated London News and The Sketch. His published works include Cornish Breakers and Other Poems (1909) and Rupert Brookes and Other Poems (1919), as well as Rambles in Bookland: an English Reading-Book for Junior Forms and Greek Lives From Plutarch. Charles and Rosalind had three daughters, Irene Margaret Byles, Edith Marion Hawker Byles and Rosalind Morwenna Byles.