Sea Poems

THE SONG OF THE STORM-SPIRITS

Come over the tide,Come over the foam,Dance on the hurricane, leap its waves,Dream not of the calm sea-cavesNor of content in them and home.For that is the reason the hearts of menAre ever weary – they would abideSomewhere out of the spumy strideOf the world's spindrift – a want denied.That is the reason: tho they knowThat the restive years have no true home,But only a Whence, Whither, and When —Whence and Whither, for hearts to roam.So who would tarry and rest the while,Not dance as we, and sing on the wind,Against the whole flow of the world has sinned,And soon is weary and cannot smile.Dance then, dance, on the fleeting spray!None can gather eternityInto his heart and bid it stay,Swiftly again it slips away.Dance, and know that the will of LifeIs the wind's will and the will of the tide,And who finds not a home in its strifeShall find no home on any side!

THE GREAT SEDUCER

Who looks too long from his windowAt the gray, wide, cold sea,Where breakers scour the beachesWith fingers of sharp foam;Who looks too long thro the gray paneAt the mad, wild, bold sea,Shall sell his hearth to a strangerAnd turn his back on home.Who looks too long from his window —Tho his wife waits by the fireside —At a ship's wings in the offing,At a gull's wings on air,Shall latch his gate behind him,Tho his cattle call from the byre-side,And kiss his wife – and leave her —And wander everywhere.Who looks too long in the twilight,Or the dawn-light, or the noon-light,Who sees an anchor liftedAnd hungers past content,Shall pack his chest for the world's end,For alien sun – or moonlight,And follow the wind, sateless,To Disillusionment!

K'U-KIANG

Because the sun like a Chinese lanternSet in a temple of clouds tonight,I was back in K'u-Kiang!Because in a temple of dragon clouds,As if with incense misty red,It hung there over the rim of the sea,I was back in a narrow street,Where amber faces pass all day,Going to pay, going to pray,Going the same old human wayThey have gone for a thousand years, men say,In K'u-Kiang.And I heard the coolie cry for his fare,I heard the merchant praise his wareOf bronze and porcelain set to snare,In K'u-Kiang!I saw strange streaming signs in blackWith gold and crimson on their back —Opiate signs in an opiate street;Where the slip and patter of felt-shod feetIs old as the sun;And the temple doorAs cool and dark as the night.And where dim lanterns, swinging there,As a lure to human grief and care,Half reveal and half concealThe ancestral gloom of the gods.I saw all this with sudden pang,As if by hashish swept or bhang,Because the sun, like a Chinese lantern,Set in a temple of clouds!

TYPHOON

(At Hong-kong)I was weary and slept on the Peak;The air clung close like a shroud,And ever the blue-fly at my earBuzzed haunting, hot and loud;I awoke and the sky was dunWith awe and a dread that soonWent shuddering thro my heart, for I knewThat it meant typhoon! typhoon!In the harbour below, far down,The junks like fowl in a flockWere tossing in wingless terror, or fledFluttering in from the shock.The city, a breathless bendOf roofs, by the water strewn,Lay silent and waiting, yet there was noneWithin it but said typhoon!Then it came, like a million windsGone mad immeasurably,A torrid and tortuous tempest stungBy rape of the fair South Sea.And it swept like a scud escapedFrom crater of sun or moon,And struck as no power of Heaven could,Or of Hell – typhoon! typhoon!And the junks were smitten and torn,The drowning struggled and cried,Or, dashed on the granite walls of the sea,In succourless hundreds died.Till I shut the sight from my eyesAnd prayed for my soul to swoon:If ever I see God's face, let itBe guiltless of that typhoon!

PENANG

I want to go back to SingaporeAnd ship along the Straits,To a bungalow I know beside Penang;Where cocoanut palms along the shoreAre waving, and the gatesOf Peace shut Sorrow out forevermore.I want to go back and hear the surfCome beating in at night,Like the washing of eternity over the dead.I want to see dawn fare up and dayGo down in golden light;I want to go back to Penang! I want to go back!I want to go back to SingaporeAnd up along the StraitsTo the bungalow that waits me by the tide.Where the Tamil and Malay tell their loreAt evening – and the fatesHave set no soothless canker at life's core.I want to go back and mend my heartBeneath the tropic moon,While the tamarind-tree is whispering thoughts of sleep.I want to believe that Earth againWith Heaven is in tune.I want to go back to Penang! I want to go back!I want to go back to SingaporeAnd ship along the StraitsTo the bungalow I left upon the strand.Where the foam of the world grows faint beforeIt enters, and abatesIn meaning as I hear the palm-wind pour.I want to go back and end my daysSome evening when the CrossOn the southern sky hangs heavily far and sad.I want to remember when I dieThat life elsewhere was loss.I want to go back to Penang! I want to go back!

NIGHTS ON THE INDIAN OCEAN

Nights on the Indian Ocean,Long nights of moon and foam,When silvery Venus low in the skyFollows the sun home.Long nights when the mild monsoonIs breaking south-by-west,And when soft clouds and the singing shroudsMake all that is seem best.Nights on the Indian Ocean,Long nights of space and dream,When silent Sirius round the PoleSwings on, with steady gleam;When oft the pushing prowSeems pressing where beforeNo prow has ever pressed – or shallFrom hence forevermore.Nights on the Indian Ocean,Long nights – with land at last,Dim land, dissolving the long sea-spellInto a sudden past —That seems as far awayAs this our life shall seemWhen under the shadow of death's shoreWe drop its ended dream.

SIGHTING ARABIA

My heart, that is Arabia, O see!That talismanic sweep of sunset coast,Which lies like richly wrought enchantment's ghostBefore us, bringing back youth's witchery!"Arabian Nights!" At last to us one comes,The crescent moon upon its purple brow.Will not Haroun and Bagdad rise up nowThere on the shore, to beating of his drums?Is not that gull a roc? That sail Sindbad's?That rocky pinnacle a minaret?Does the wind call to prayer from it? O yetI hear the fancy, fervid as a lad's!"Allah il Allah," rings it; O my heart,Fall prostrate, for to Mecca we are near,That flashing light is but a sign sent clearFrom her, your houri, as her curtains part!Soon she will lean out from her lattice, soon,And bid you climb up to your Paradise,Which is her panting lips and passion eyesUnder the drunken sweetness of the moon!O heart, my heart, drink deeply ere they die,The sunset dome, the minaret, the dreamsFlashing afar from youth's returnless streams:For we, my heart, must grow old, you and I!

"ALL'S WELL"

IThe illimitable leaping of the sea,The mouthing of its madness to the moon,The seething of its endless sorcery,Its prophecy no power can attune,Swept over me as, on the sounding prowOf a great ship that steered into the stars,I stood and felt the awe upon my browOf death and destiny and all that mars.IIThe wind that blew from Cassiopeia castWanly upon my ear a rune that rung;The sailor in his eyrie on the mastSang an "All's well," that to the spirit clungLike a lost voice from some aërial realmWhere ships sail on forever to no shore,Where Time gives Immortality the helm,And fades like a far phantom from life's door.III"And is all well, O Thou Unweariable,Who launchest worlds upon bewildered space,"Rose in me, "All? or did thy hand grow dullBuilding this world that bears a piteous race?O was it launched too soon or launched too late?Or can it be a derelict that driftsBeyond thy ken toward some reef of FateOn which Oblivion's sand forever shifts?"IVThe sea grew softer as I questioned – calmWith mystery that like an answer moved,And from infinity there fell a balm,The old peace that God is, tho all unproved.The old faith that tho gulfs sidereal stunThe soul, and knowledge drown within their deep,There is no world that wanders, no not oneOf all the millions, that He does not keep.

SOMNAMBULISM

INight is above me,And Night is above the night.The sea is beside me soughing, or is still.The earth as a somnambulist moves onIn a strange sleep …A sea-bird cries.And the cry wakes in meDim, dead sea-folk, my sires —Who more than myself are me.Who sat on their beach long nights ago and sawThe sea in its silence;And cursed it or implored;Or with the Cross defied;Then on the morrow in their boats went down.IINight is above me …And Night is above the night.Rocks are about me, and, beyond, the sand …And the low reluctant tide,That rushes back to ebb a last farewellTo the flotsam borne so long upon its breast.Rocks … But the tide is out,And the slime lies naked, like a thing ashamedThat has no hiding-place.And the sea-bird hushes —The bird and all far cries within my blood —And earth as a somnambulist moves on.

CHARTINGS

There is no moon, only the sea and stars;There is no land, only the vessel's bowOn which I stand alone and wonder howMen ever dream of ports beyond the barsOf Finitude that fix the Here and Now.A meteor falls, and foam beneath me breaks;Dim phosphor fires within it faintly die.So soft the sea is that it seems a skyOn which eternity to life awakes.The universe is spread before my face,Worlds where perchance a million seas like thisAre flowing and where tides of pain and blissFind, as on earth, so prevalent a placeThat nothing of their wont we there should miss.The Universe, that man has dared to sayIs but one Being – ah, courageous thought!Which is so vast that hope itself is fraughtWith shame, while saying it, and shrinks away.Shrinks, even as now! For clouds sweep up the skiesAnd darken the wide waters circling round,From out whose deep arises the old soundOf Terror unto which no tongue repliesBut Faith – that nothing ever shall confound.Not only pagan Perseus but the CrossIs shrouded – with wild wind and wilder rain,That on me beat until my soul againSings unsurrendering to fears of Loss.For this I know, – yea, tho all else lie hidUncharted on the waters of our fate,All lands of Whence or Whither, whose estateIn vain imagination seeks to thrid,Yet cannot, for the fog within Death's gate, —This thing I know, that life, whatever its SourceOr Destiny, comes with an upward urge,And that we cannot thwart its mighty surge,But with a joy in strife must keep the course.

THE TRAIL FROM THE SEA

I took the trail to the wooded canyon,The trail from the sea:For I heard a calling in me,A landward calling irresistible in me: —Have done with things of the sea – things of the soul;Have done with waters that slip away from under you.Have done with things faithless, things unfathomable and vain;With the vast deeps of Time and the Hereafter.Have done with the fog-breather, the fog-beguiler;With the foam of the never-resting.Have done with tides and passions, tides and mysteries for a season.Have done with infinite yearnings cast adrift on infinite vagueness —With never a certain sail, never a rudder sure for guidance,With never a compass-needle free of desire.For the ways of earth are good, as well as sea-ways,The peaks of it as well as ports unknown.Not only perils matter, stormy perils, over the pathless,Not only the shoals that sink your ship of dreams.Not only the phantom lure of far horizons,Not only the windy guess at the goals of God.But morning matters, and dew upon the rose,And noon, shadowless noon, and simple sheep on the pastures straying.And toil matters, amid the accustomed corn,And peace matters, the valley-spirit of peace, unprone to wander,Unprone to pierce to the world's end – and past it.And zephyrs matter, that never lift up a sail,Save that of the thistle voyaging over the meadow.And the lark – oh – the sunny lark – as well as the songless petrel,Who cries the foamy length of a thousand leagues.And silence matters, silence free of all surging,Silence, the spirit of happiness and home.And oh how much the laugh of a child matters:More than the green of an island suddenly lit by sun at dawn.And friends, the greetings of friends, how they matter:More than ships that meet and fling a wild ahoy and pass,On any alien tides however enchanted.And the face of love, the evening face of love, at a window waiting,Shall ever a kindled Light on any long-unlifting shore,Shall ever a Harbor Light like that light matter?Ah no! so enough of the sea and the soul for a season.Too long followed they leave life as a dream,Reality as a mirage when port is made."Ever in sight of the human," is the helm-word of the wisest,For earth is not earth to one upon the flood of infinity;To the eye, then, it is but an atom-star, adrift, and oh,No longer warm with the beating of countless hearts.No longer warm with the human throb – the simple breath of today,With yester-hours or the near dreams of to-morrow.No longer rich with the little innumerous blooms of brief delights,Nor all divinely drenched with sympathy.No longer green with the humble grass of duties that must grow,To clothe it against desert aridity.No longer zoned with the air of hope, no longer large with faith —No longer heaven enough – if Heaven fails us!

HAUNTED SEAS

A gleaming glassy ocean,Under a sky of gray;A tide that dreams of motion,Or moves, as the dead may;A bird that dips and waversOver lone waters round,Then with a cry that quaversIs gone – a spectral sound.The brown sad sea-weed driftingFar from the land, and lost.The faint warm fog unlifting,The derelict long-tossed,But now at rest – tho hauntedBy the death-scenting shark,Whose prey no more undauntedSlips from it, spent and stark.

SEA LURE

(The Maine Coast)It is so, O sea! wild rosesBloom here in the scent of your brine.And the juniper round them closes,And the bays amid them twine,To guard and to praise their beauty;And the gulls above them cry,And the stern rocks stand on duty,Where the surf beats white and high.It is so, O sea! wild roses,With the day-long fog bedrenched,Have come from their inland closesWith a thirst for you unquenched.And over your cliffs they clamber,And over your vast they gaze;For the tides of you can enamourEven them with their woodland ways.Yea, the passion of you and the powerAnd the largeness are a lureTo even the heart of a flower,O sea, with a heart unsure!For love is a thing unsated,Nor ever in any breastHas it dwelt, all want abated,At rest.

SONGS TO A. H. R

IMINGLINGSIt is the old old vision,The moonlit sea – and you.I cannot make disseveranceBetween the two.For all the world's wide beautyTo me you seem,All that I love in shadowOr glow or gleam.It is the old old murmur,The sea's sound and your voice.God in his Bliss between themCould make no choice.For all the world's deep musicIn you I hear:Nor shall I ask death, ever,For aught more dear.IILOVE AND INFINITYAcross the kindling twilight moonA late gull wings to rest.The sea is murmuring underneathIts vast eternal quest.The coast-light flashes over the tideA red and warning eye,And oh the world is very wide,But you are nigh!The stars come out from zone to zone,The wind knows every oneAnd blows their message to my heart,As it has ever done."They are all God's," it tells me, "all,However huge or high."But ah I could not trust its call —Were you not by!IIIRECOMPENSENot if I chose from a world of daysCould I find a day like this.The sky is a wreath of azure hazeAnd the sea an azure bliss.The surf runs racing the young salt wind,Shouting without a fearOver reef, bar, cliff and scaur,Where you and I lie near.O you and I who have watched the skyAnd sea from many a shore!You, love, and I who will live and die —And watch the sea no more!O joy of the world! Joy of love,Joy that can say to death,"Tho you end all with your wanton pall,We two have had this breath!"IVAT THE EBB-HOURAs I hear, thro the midnight sighing,The low ebb-tide withdrawn,And gulls on the dark cliff cryingFor far discernless dawn,It seems that all life is lyingWithin your every breath,Yet I can not believe in dying,Or death.As I hear, from the gray church tower,The bell's unfailing soundPeal forth hour after hourTo night's lone reaches round,It seems as if Time's wan powerWould sear all things apace —All, save in my heart one flower,Your face.VIN A DARK HOURYou are not with me – only the moon,The sea and the gulls' cry, out of tune;The myriad cry of the gulls still strewnOn the sands where the tide will enter soon.You are not with me, only the breathOf the wind – and then the wind's death.A shrouding silence then that saith,"Even as wind love vanisheth."You are not with me – only fear,As old as earth's first frenzied bierThat severed two whose hearts were near,And left one with all Life unclear.VIVIA AMOROSAWhen we two walk, my love, on the pathThe moon makes over the sea,To the end of the world where sorrow hathAn end that is ecstasy,Should we not think of the other roadOf wearying dust and stoneOur feet would fare did each but careTo follow the way alone?When we two slip at night to the skiesAnd find one star that we keepAs a trysting-place to which our eyesMay lead our souls ere sleep,Should we not pause for a little spaceAnd think how many must sighBecause they gaze over starry waysWith no heart-comrade by?When we two then lie down to our dreamsThat deepen still the delightOf our wandering where stars and streamsStray in immortal light,Should we not grieve with the myriadsFrom East of earth to WestWho lay them down at night but to drownA longing for some loved breast?Ah, yes, for life has a thousand gifts,But love it is gives life.Who walks thro his world in loneness liftsA soul that is sorrow-rife.But they to whom it is given to treadThe moon-path and not sinkCan ever say the unhappiest wayEarth has is fair, to the brink.VIITRANSFUSIONA shoal-light flashes east,And livid lightning west,The silvery dark night-sea between,On which we ride at rest,And gaze far, far awayInto the fretless skies,World-sadness in our thought – but ah,Content within our eyes.The ship's bell strikes – the soundFloats shrouded to our ears,Then suddenly, as at a touch,The universe appearsA Presence InfiniteThat penetrates our loveAnd makes us one with night and seaAnd all the stars above.

NEED OF STORM

(Naples-on-the-Gulf)On the green floor of the Gulf the wind is walking,Printing it with invisible feet;The tide is talking.Purple and grey the horizon walls them roundWith purpler clouds.They wander in it like guests gently astrayIn a house deep mystery shrouds.I do not know the speech of the tide,For too articulate have become my years:Beauty brings only words, not breathless tears.So the young heron fishing there in the foamOn the sand's edge,Would once have taken my spirit far, far homeTo the infinite, when he vanished thro the gloam.But now I am left behind on the beach – a shellThat no more knows the wonder of the sea's swell,Or more than the empty echo of its knell.To sea then, Life, wildly to sea with a stormSweep me again,From the smooth dull beach of custom where I lie,That I may feel once moreThe swaying surge of passion thro me swarm!

A FLORIDA INTERLUDE

(Naples-on-the-Gulf)IBehind me lie the Everglades,The mystic grassy Everglades,Where the moccasin and the Seminole glideIn secret silent Indian ways.Before me lies the Gulf,The cup of blue bright tropic waters,Held to the parched lips of the SouthTo cool and quench its thirst.Behind me lie the Everglades,Before me lies the Gulf,Which the sunset soon shall change to wine,A Eucharist for the longing soul.Its rim of land shall be transformedTo Mexic opal and chrysoprase,And then shall come the moonAs calm as a thought of Christ.As calm as a thought of Christ —Over the cup's sand-rim enchasedWith palm and pine, Floridian friends,Saying their twilight litanies;While homeward flies the heronTo his island cypress in the swamp,Which Spanish mosses drape and the moonSilverly soothes to peace.IIBehind me lie the Everglades,Where the bittern wails to the moon's face.Peace is gone as I wakeAnd memory in me wailsFrom the primal swamp, Heredity,Whence I have come with all the desiresOf creeping, walking, flying things,To creep or walk or fly.With all the desires of the earth-creatures;Yet with a want transcendent,A want that comes with the glimmer of starsAnd pierces to my heart.A want of the life I have not known,Of the life unknowable,In the Everglades of the UniverseWhere the Great Spirit glides.

A FLORIDA BOATING SONG

Down thro Florida keys,From island, to island!Down thro Florida keys,Where mangrove roots dip in the seas!A myriad tangled rootsFrom each palmetto byland,Oyster-encrusted roots mid whichThe heron wades in the shallow shades!Down thro Florida keys,Around them, between them,Thro low green Florida keys,So low they scarce seem born of the seas!Where pouchy pelicans roostOn cypresses that lean themOut over the idle lap of the tideThat comes and goes with balmy flows!Down thro Florida keys,Thro mazes on mazesOf ripple-encircled keys,Where sun and wind play as they please!Where the eaglet, high in air,Or the wild white ibis, dazesEyes that follow them up the blue,As the heart would do, the heart too!Down thro Florida keysI'm going, I'm going!Thro low green Florida keysAnd greener glades of Florida seas!And this is all I know,That all in the world worth knowingIs joy like that of the tarpon's leapIn air divine with the warm sunshine!

DAWN-BLISS

(Naples-on-the-Gulf)I went out at dawn,Pelicans were fishing,Big-beaked, grey and brown;Little waves were swishing.Clouds creamed the sky,As shells creamed the shore;Wild aery hues of beautyRound seemed to pour!I went out at dawn,Pelicans were floating,Big beaks on their breasts;Up the sun came boating."Ship ahoy!" I cried,To his golden sail.Bliss-winds of beauty in meBroke – to a gale!I went out at dawn,Pelicans were winging.Palms waved passion plumes,Beach sands were singing.Stripped, save of strength,I plunged into the seaAnd swam, till the bliss of beautyDied away in me.

ATAVISM

I leant out over a ledging cliff and looked down into the sea,Where weed and kelp and dulse swayed, in green translucency;Where the abalone clung to the rock and the star-fish lay about,Purpling the sands that slid away under the silver trout.And the sea-urchin too was there, and the sea-anemone.It was a world of watery shapes and hues and wizardry.And I felt old stirrings wake in me, under the tides of time,Sea-hauntings I had brought with me out of the ancient slime.And now, as I muse, I cannot rid my senses of the spellThat in a tidal trance all things around me drift and swellUnder the sea of the Universe, down into which strange eyesKeep peering at me, as I peered, with wonder and surmise.

RE-RECKONING

Two years have gone, and again I standOn the bow of a mighty shipThat pushes her way 'twixt sea and starsWith soft and dreamy dip.Two years of labouring, heart and hand,Of waging spirit-wars,Of wondering ever what life is —And if death heals its scars.Two years; and again the mast-bell soundsAbove me – with a low voice,As ghostly as the white phosphor-foamThat breaks with the old noiseOf waters that have washed all boundsOf earth, that is man's home —His ark – on the wide ether flung,Unrestingly to roam.For, even as we, is this our earthAn endless wandererFar down a universe with vastStrange voyagings astir;And where time ever brings to birthA craving, never past,To fare from where we are, to whereNo anchor ever was cast.A craving – in the mote, the man,The mollusc and the star;A yearning on – O life! O life!How far leads it, how far?All unbelievably beganOur voyage, mid a strange strife —That, meaningless, yet seems to meanIt is with Wisdom rife.But if it is not, shall we say,"Let man scuttle his ship,And drown in universal deathThe griefs that at him grip?"No; for no surety rests thereinTo certain end of breath.He can but let hope set the courseHis soul foretokeneth.

TO THE AFTERNOON MOON, AT SEA

Take care, O wisp of a moon,Vague on the sunny blue above the sea,Or the gull flying across youWill pierce your veil-thin shape with a sharp wing!Take care, or the wind will wilt you,As he does the clouds snowily drifting by you,And diffuse you over the sky, a silvery mist,To give more cool to the day!Take care, so near the horizon,Or a phantom skipper, one who has long been drowned,Will reach above it and seize youAnd make you his sail to circle the world forever!Take care, take care! for frailtyIs the prey of the strong, and you, a wraith of it,Have yet a long while to go before nightfallBrings you to sure effulgence!