xt77pv6b330k https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt77pv6b330k/data/mets.xml Rice, Cale Young, 1872-1943. 1921  books b92-245-31687477 English Century, : New York : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Sea poems  / by Cale Young Rice. text Sea poems  / by Cale Young Rice. 1921 2002 true xt77pv6b330k section xt77pv6b330k 














SEA POEMS

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S E A



P O E M S



BY



CALE YOUNG RICE
           AUTHOR OF
 "WRAITHS AND REALITIES," "TRAILS SUNWARD,"
       "COLLECTED POEMS," ETC.















       NEW YORK
    THE CENTURY CO.
            1921

 























Copyright, 1921, by
THE CENTURY CO.

 





















           TO

HARRISON S. MORRIS
A HATER OF SHAM AND PRETENSE,
A LOVER OF BEAUTY AND TRUTH,
      A FIRM FRIEND.

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            FOREWORD

  THE poems of this volume, gathered here
after many requests, are, with a few exceptions,
from my previous lyrical publications. They
are also in a real sense an intimate record.
For the sea has often enough seemed to me
almost as a vast external subconsciousness in
which the forces of my being-as well as the
world's-were at play.
                     CALE YOUNG RICE.
Louisville, Ky., August, 1921.

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             CONTENTS
                                         PAGE
Sea-Hoardings ..............     ...............  3
The Shore's Song to the Sea ......      ..........  5
To a Firefly by the Sea ........    .............  9
Invocation ..........      .......................  11
I Know Your Heart, 0 Sea! ......       .......... 11
A Sea-Ghost .................    ..............  13
Finitude ...................................     15
The Colonel's Story...............        16
Cosmism ..............                    21
Off the Irish Coast .........    ................ 22
The Fairies of God .........      ...............  23
The Song of the Homesick Gael .....       ....... 24
Pageants of the Sea .........     ...............  26
A Song of the Old Venetians ......      ......... 29
Basking   ...................................    30
Sappho's Death Song ........      ...............  32
The Wind's Word .........   ................ 33
Submarine Mountains ........  ..............34
The Song of the Storm-Spirits ......     ........ 36
The Great Seducer .........      ................ 37

                     lx

 
                                           PAGE
K'u-Kiarng .............................    38
Typhoon  .............................      39
Penang .............................        41
Nights on the Indian Ocean ................ 42
Sighting Arabia ...........................   44
"All's "Vell" ............................. 45
Somnambulism  ............................. 47
Chartings .............................     48
The frail from the Sea .................... 50
Haunted Seas .............................    54
Sea Lure .............................      54
Songs to A. H. R.
      I Minglings ............  ............ 56
      II  Love and Infinity .......  .......... 56
    III Recompense ...........  ............ 57
    IV  At the Ebb-Hour .......   .......... 58
      V  In a Dark Flour .......   .......... 59
      VI  Via Amorosa .........   ............ 59
    VII Transfusion ..........    ............ 61
Need of Storm ............................    62
A Florida Interlude ........................ 63
A Florida Boating Song ................... 65
Daw,,n Bliss ............................     66
Atavism ............................        68
Re-reckoning  ............................    69
To the Afternoon Moon, At Sea ............ 70
Paths ............................          71
                       x

 

                                         PAGE
From a Northern Beach ....................  73
Passage .......... ........................ 74
Aleen ..... 75
To a Solitary Sea-Gull .....................  76
Ineffable Things ..........  .......... 77
The Song of a Sea-Farer ...................  78
Waves .....          ...............       79
In a Storm......       .............. 80
After Their Parting ......................  80
A Word's Magic ..........    .......... 82
Sea Rhapsody .......     ............. 83
In an Oriental Harbour ....................  84
Under the Sky ........    ............ 85
A Song for Healing ......................  86
A Singhalese Love Lament ................. 87
The City .....        ............... 89
Full Tide ......       .............. 89
The Herding .......       ............. 91
On the Maine Coast ......................  92
Seance .....         ............... 93
A Sidmouth Lad ...........    ......... 93
Widowed .......        ............... 94
To the Sea ......       .............. 95
Sea-Mad .....         ............... 97
The Atheist ......     .............. 98
At the Helm .......      ............. 99
Imperturbable ........    ............ 100
                      xi

 

                                          PAGE
Waste ................................ 100
Resurgence ....         ............. 101
Life's Answer .....    ............ 103
As the Tide Comes In ..................  103
Sense-Sweetness .....  ............ 104
Tidals .....        ................. 105
A Sailor's Wife ......   ........... 105
To Sea!....          .............. 106
Give Over, 0 Sea! ....... .......... 107
The Nun ....           ............. 109
Last Sight of Land ....... .......... 110



xii

 















SEA POEMS

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     SEA POEMS
     By CALE YOUNG RICE



          SEA-HOARDINGS

MI  Y heart is open again and sea flows in,
     It shall fill with a summer of mists
     and winds and clouds and waves break-
     ing,
Of gull-wings over the green tide, of the surf's
      drenching din,
Of sudden horizon-sails that come and vanish,
      phantom-thin,
Of arching sapphire skies, deep and unaching.

I shall lie on the rocks just over the weeds that
      drape
The clear sea-pools, where birth and death in
      sunny ooze are teeming.
Where the crab in quest of booty sidles about,
      a sullen shape,
                   3

 

Where the snail creeps and the mussel sleeps
       with wary valves agape,
Where life is too grotesque to be but seeming.

And the swallow shall weave my dreams with
       threads of flight,
A shuttle with silver breast across the warp of
       the waves gliding;
And an isle far out shall be a beam in the loom
       of my delight,
And the pattern of every dream shall be a
       rapture bathed in light-
Its evanescence a beauty most abiding.

And the sunsets shall give sadness all its due,
They shall stain the sands and trouble the tides
       with all the ache of sorrow.
They shall bleed and die with a beauty of
       meaning old yet ever new,
They shall burn with all the hunger for things
       that hearts have failed to do,
They shall whisper of a gold that none can
       borrow.

And the stars shall come and build a bridge of
       fire
For the moon to cross the boundless sea, with
       never a fear of sinking.
                     4

 

They shall teach me of the magic things of
      life never to tire,
And how to renew, when it is low, the lamp
      of my desire-
And how to hope, in the darkest deeps of
      thinking.


  THE SHORE'S SONG TO THE SEA

    UT on the rocks primeval,
    The grey Maine rocks that slant and
       break to the sea,
'With the bay and juniper round them,
And the leagues on leagues before them,
And the terns and gulls wheeling and crying,
       wheeling and crying over,
I sat heart-still and listened.

And first I could only hear the wind in my
       ears,
And the foam trying to fill the high rock-
       shallows.
And then, over the wind, over the whitely
       blossoming foam,
Low, low, like a lover's song beginning,
I heard the nuptial pleading of the old shore,
A pleading ever occultly growing louder
                     5

 

o sea, glad bride of me!
Born of the bright ether and given to wed me,
Given to glance, ever, for me, and gleam and
       dance in the sun-
Come to my arms, come to my reaching arms,
That seem so still and unavailing to take you,
       and hold you,
Yet never forget,
Never by day or night,
The hymeneal delights of your embracings.

Come, for the moon, my rival, shall not have
      you;
No, for tho twice daily afar he beckons and
      you go,
You, my bride, a little way back to meet him,
As if he once had been your lover, he too, and
      again enspelled you,
Soon, soon, I know it is only feigning!
For turning, playfully turning, tidally turning,
You rush foamingly, swiftly back to my arms!

And so would I have you rush; so rush now!
Come from the sands where you have stayed
      too long,
Come from the reefs where you have wan-
      dered silent,

                    6

 

For ebbings are good, the restful ebbings of
       love,
But, oh, the bridal flowings of it are better
And now I would have you loose again my
       tresses,
My locks rough and weedy, rough and brown
      and brinily tangled,
But, oh, again as a bridegroom's, when your
       tide, whispering in,
Lifts them up, pulsingly up with kisses!

Come with your veil thrown back, breaking to
      spray !
And oh, with plangent passion!
Come with your naked sweetness, salt and
      wholesome, to my bosom;
Let not a cave or crevice of me miss you, or
       cran ny,
For, oh, the nuptial joy you float into me,
The cooling ambient clasp of you, I have
      waited over-long,
And I need to know again its marriage mean-
      ing!

For I think it is not alone to bring forth life,
       that I mate you;
More than life is the beauty of life with love!

                     7

 
Plentiful are the children that you bear to me,
       the blossoms,
The fruits and all the creatures at your breast
       dewily fed,
But mating is troubled with a far higher mean-
       ing-
A hint of a consummation for all things.
Come utterly then,
Utterly to me come,
And let us surge together, clasped close, in
       infinite union,
Until we reach a transcendence of all birth,
       and all dying,
An ecstasy holding the universe blended-
Such ecstasy as is its ultimate Aim!

So sang the shore, the long bay-scented shore,
Broken by many an isle, many an inlet bird-
       embosomed,
And the sea gave answer, bridally, tidally turn-
       ing,
And leapt, radiant, into his rocky arms!



8

 

TO A FIREFLY BY THE SEA



LITTLE torch-bearer, alone with me in
L     the night,
You cannot light the sea, nor I illumine life.
They are too vast for us, they are too deep
      for us.
We glow with all our strength, but back the
      shadows sweep:
And after a while will come-unshadowed
      Sleep.

Here on the rocks that take the turning tide;
Here by the wide lone waves and lonelier
      wastes of sky,
We keep our poet-watch, as patient poets
    should,
Questioning earth's commingled ill and good
      to us.
Yet little of them, or naught, have truly under-
      stood.

Bright are the stars, and constellated thick.
To you, so quick to flit along your flickering
      course,
They seem perhaps as glowing mates in other
       fields.
                     9

 
And all the knowledge I have gathered yields
       to me
Scarce more of the great mystery their won-
       der wields.

For the moon we are waiting-and behold
Her ardent gold drifts up, her sail has caught
       the breeze
That blows all being thro the Universe always.
So now, little light-keeper, you no more need
       nurse
Your gleam, for lo! she mounts, and sullen
      clouds disperse.

And I with aching thought may cease to burn,
And humbly turn to rest-knowing no glow
      of mine
Can ever be so beauteous as have been to me
Your soft beams here beside the sea's elusive
       din:
For grief too oft has kindled me, and pain,
       and the world's sin.



10

 

             INVOCATION
             (From a High Cliff)

  S WEEP unrest
  a Out of my blood,
  Winds of the sea! Sweep the fog
  Out of my brain
  For I am one
  Who has told Life he w"ill be free.
  Who wvill not doubt of work that's done,
  Who wili not fear the work to do,
  Who wvill hold peaks Promethean
  Better than all Jove's honey-dew.
  Who wvhen the Vulture tears his breast
  Will smile into the Terror's Eyes.
  Who for the World has this Bequest-
  Hope, that eternally is wise.


  I KNOW YOUR HEART, 0 SEA!

I KNOW     your heart, 0 Sea!
   You are tossed with cold desire to flood
      earth utterly;
You run at the cliffs, you fling wild billows at
      beaches,
You reach at islands with fingers of foam to
      crumble them;
                    11

 
Yes, even at mountain tops you shout your
       purpose
Of making the earth a shoreless circle of
      waters!

I know your surging heart!
Tides mighty and all-contemptuous rise with-
      in it,
Tides spurred by the wind to champ and
      charge and thunder-
Tho the sun and moon rein them-
At the troubling lana, the breeding-place of
      mortals,
Of men who are ever transmuting life to
      spirit,
And ever taking your salt to savor their tears.

I know your tides, I know them!
"Down," they rage, "with the questing of
      men, and crying!
With their continents-cradles of grief and
      despair!
Better entombing waters for them, better our
      deeps unfathomed,
Where birth is soulless, life goalless, death
      toll-less for all,
And where dark ooze enshrouds past resur-
      rection !"



12

 
Ah, yes, I know your heart!
I have heard it raving at coast-lights set to
       reveal you,
I have watched it foam at ships that sought to
       defy you,
I have seen it straining at cables that cross
      you, bearing whispers hid to you,
Or heaving at waves of the air that tell your
       hurricanes.

I know, I know your heart!
Men you will sink, and shores will sink; but a
       shore shall be man's forever,
From whence his lighthouse soul shall signal
       the Infinite,
Whose fleets go by, star after star, bearing
       their unknown burden
To a Port which only eternity shall deter-
       mine!



              A SEA-GHOST

OH, fisher-fleet, go in from the sea
       And furl your wings.
The bay is gray with the twilit spray
  And the loud surf springs.
                     13

 
The chill buoy-bell is rung by the hands
  Of all the drowned,
Who know the woe of the wind and tow
  Of the tides around.

Go in, go in! Oh, haste from the sea,
  And let them rest-
The throng who long for the air-still long,
  But are still unblest.

Aye, even as I, whose hands at the bell
  Now labour most.
The tomb has gloom, but oh, the doom
  Of the drear sea-ghost!

He evermore must wander the ooze
  Beneath the wave,
Forlorn-to warn of the tempest born,
  And to save-to save!

Then go, go in! and leave us the sea,
  For only so
Can peace release us and give us ease
  Of our salty woe.



14

 
FINITUDE



ONE ruby, amid a diamond spray of stars,
The coast light flashes;
    The tide plashes,
Across a mile of bay-sweet land the moon
    Comes soon:
She has lost half of her lustre and looks old.

A cricket, finitude's incarnate cry,
And the infinite waters with their hushless
      sigh
    Are the two sounds
    The night has:
Each in eternal wistfulness abounds.

                    II
I have wakened out of my sleep because I too
    Am wistful,
        Tristeful;
Because I know that half of me is gone,
And that all frailty cries in the cricket's tone.

I have wakened out of my sleep to watch and
      listen.
    For what



15

 
To see for a moment universes glisten;
To wonder and want-and go to sleep again,
        And die,
    And be forgot.




      THE COLONEL'S STORY

N   0, no, my friend; there is an agony
IN   Not to be exorcised out of the world
By any voice of hope.- But, I will tell you.

The Sonia was sailing without lights-
Bearing three hundred souls-and without
      bells;
For she had reached the "Zone," where the
      Hun sharks
With their torpedo tongues could spit death
      at us
Out of the inky sea-hells where they hid.
On the main deck we stood, in a wind-
      shelter,-
My wife, and by us a pale girl whose eyes
Had all disaster in them. And my thought
      was,
"I hope to God the moon is shut so deep
                    16

 

In cloud-murk there in the East that hurri-
      canes
Can't blow her out of it." For in the Zone
The moon had come to mean only betrayal,
And now, if ever, was her wanton chance.

The slipping water soaked with soulless dark
Fell under and around us shudderingly,
Yet somehow brought an anxious hopefulness.
"We're making twenty knots," I said; and felt
Our bow cut thro the tangle of the waves
As if the No Man's Sea ahead of us
Would soon be crossed; and I, out to rejoin
My regiment, could set my wife safe some-
      where,
And help again to stab that curst amphibian,
Autocracy-whose spawn in the sea gave it
A terror greater than infinitude's.
For God knows, with the woman that one
      loves
Aboard a ship, and only a cloud perhaps
Between the Hun's shark eyes and sure escape
From the black icy fathoms that would choke
      her,
There's little left within a man but nerves.
So when I drew her closer into the shelter,
Out of the sheering wind, the life belt

                    17

 
She wore seemed like a coffin in that sepulchre
Of night and sea. And when the other, there,
With the disaster eyes and pallid face,
Turned half toward us, I was shaken as if
The moon had suddenly walked out of her
      shroud
With phosphorescent purpose to reveal us.

But on w e plunged and tumbled, till at last
The blank monotonous sink and swell lulled
      me
To faith. And I was only thinking softly
Of her-my wife's-first kiss on a summer
      night
Under the moonlit laurels of our home,
When came a cry from the wan girl gazing
Frozenly on the sea-where the moon now
Indeed was pointing at us pallidly
A death-path. And my throat was gripped
      by it,
That clutching cry, as if the glacial depths
Down under us already had risen up.
So starting toward the slipping rail I called,
"What is it where" For, tense as a clair-
      voyant,
With eyes that seemed to feel under the tide
The stealthy peril stalking us, she stood there.
                    18

 

After a moment's gazing, I too saw-
What she foresensed-destruction seething
      toward us.
"The boats!" I cried, "the rafts!"   And
      stumbled back
Over the streaming deck to her I loved.
Then the shock came, as if the sea's wild heart
Had broken under us, and ripped the entrails,
The human hundreds, out of our vessel's hold,
To strew the foam with mania and despair,
With shieks strangled by wind and wave and
      terror.
And thro that floating, mangled, blind confu-
      sion,
Where hands reached at the infinite then sank,
Where faces clung to wreckage as to eternity,
I sought for her who shared my life's voyage,
Who had been my heart's pilot; and who now,
Wrecked with me, swvirled, too, in the torn
      waters .
And soon I saw her, still by that wan girl,
Tossed on a watery omnipotence.
Blind with brine I swam for her-as the
      moon,
Her treachery done, again got to a cloud.
Flung back by every wave, I fought; beating
                    19

 
Against them  as against God.   And soon,
      somehow,
Had reached to a limp body on the surge,
Limp and strange-but living . . . and not
      drowned!
Then seeing a raft near, I struggled onward,
Gulping the sea and being gulped by it,
But finding arms at last that drew my burden
And me from horror to half-swooning safety.

I could have died, I think, of the relief.
But the moon came again, nakedly out,
As if to see what she had done. Then I,
Bending over the form that I had fought for,
And chafing it, saw . . . not her I loved!
Infinite Cruelty, not her I loved! . . .
But that pale girl, with the eyes of all disaster.

Oh, yes, I raved, and said God was a Hun,
A Kaiser of a Universe that loathed him.
And back, too, would have leapt, into the
      waves,
But the same hands that saved were ready to
      hold me.



20

 

COSM ISAI



THE sea asleep like a dreamer sighs;
T     The salt rock-pools lie still in the sun,
Except for the sidling crab that creeps
  Thro the moveless mosses green and dun.
The small gray snail clings everywhere,
  For the tide is out; and the sea-wseed dries
Its tangled tresses in the warm air,
  That seems to ooze from the far blue skies,
  Where not a white gull on white wing
       flies.

The mollusc gleams like a gem amid
  The scurf and the clustered green sea-
       grapes,
Whose trellis is but the rock's bare side,
  Whose husbandman but the tide that drapes.
The little sandpiper tilts and picks
  His food, on the wet sea-marges hid,
Till sudden a wave comes in and flicks
  Him off, then flashes away to bid
  Another frighten him-as it did.

o sweet is the world of living things,
  And sweet are the mingled sea and shore!
It seems as if I never again
  Shall find life ill-as oft before.



21

 

As if my days should come as the clouds
  Come yonder-and vanish without wings;
As if all sorrow that ever shrouds
  My soul and darkly about it clings
  Had lost forever its ravenings.

As if I knew with a deeper sense
  That good alone is ultimate;
That never an evil wrought of God
  Or man came truly out of hate.
That Better springs from the heart of Worse,
  As calm from the heaving elements;
That all things born to the Universe
  May suffer and perish utterly hence,
  But never refute its Innocence.



        OFF THE IRISH COAST
        G ULLS on the wind,
        G    Crying! crying!
        Are you the ghosts
        Of Erin's dead
        Of the forlorn
        Whose days went sighing
        Ever for Beauty
        That ever fled
                    22

 

        Ever for Light
        That never kindled
        Ever for Song
        No lips have sung
        Ever for Joy
        That ever dwindled
        Ever for Love that stung



        THE FAIRIES OF GOD

L AST night I slipt from the banks of
      dream
And swam in the currents of God,
On a tide where His fairies were at play,
Catching salt tears in their little white hands,
For human hearts;
And dancing, dancing, in gala bands,
On the currents of God;
And singing, singing:-

There is no wind blows here or spray-
Wind upon us!
Only the waters ripple away
Under our feet as we gather tears.
God has made mortals for the years,
Us for aluay!
                   23

 

God has made mnortals full of fears,
Fears for the night and fears for the day.
If they would free themn of grief that sears,
If they u'ould keep what love endears,
If they would lay no more lilies on biers-
Let them say!
For we are swift to enchant and tire
Time's will!
Our feet are wiser than all desire,
Our song is better than faith or famne;
To whom it is given no ill e'er came,
Who has it not grows chill!
Who has it not grows laggard and lame,
Nor knows that the world is a Minstrel's lyre,
Smitten and never still! . . .

Last night on the currents of God.



         THE SONG OF THE
           HOMESICK GAEL
 (In the characteristic minor of a recent literary
                movement)

I LONG to see the solan-goose
     Wing over Ailsa crag
At dusk again-or Girvan gulls at dawn;

                    24

 
To see the osprey grayly glide
  The winds of Kamasaig:
For grayness now my heart is set upon.

The grayness of sea-spaces where
  There's loneliness alone,
Save for the wings that sweep it with unrest,
Save for the hunger-cries that sound
  And die into a moan,
Save for the moaning hunger in my breast.

For grayness is the hue of all
  In life that is not lies.
A thousand years of tears are in my heart;
And only in their mystery
  Can I be truly wise:
From light and laughter follies only start.

I long to see the mists again
  Above the tumbling tide
Of Ailsa, at the coming of the night.
There's weariness and emptiness
  And soul unsatisfied
Forever in the places of delight.



25

 

PAGEANTS OF THE SEA



W    HAT memories have I of it,
VV       The sea, continent-clasping,
The sea whose spirit is a sorcery,
The sea whose magic foaming is immortal!
What memories have I of it thro the years!

What memories of its shores!
Of shadowy headlands doomed to stay the
      storm;
And red cliffs clawing ever into the tides;
Of misty moors whose ro-al heather purples;
Of channeled marshes, village-nesting hills;
Of crags wind-eaten, homes of hungry gulls;
Of bays-
Where sails float furled, resting softly at har-
      bour,
Until, wlinging again, they sweep away.

Wshat memories have I, too,
Of faring out at dawn upon tameless waters,
Upon the infinite wasted yearning of them,
While winds, the mystic harp-strings of the
      world,
Were sounding sweet farewells;
While coast and lighthouse tower were fading
      fast,



26

 

And from me all the world slipped like a gar-
      ment.

What memories of mid-deeps! . . .
Of heaving on thro haunted vasts of foam,
Thro swaying terrors of tormented tides;
While the wind, no more singing, took to rav-
      ing,
In rhythmic infinite words,
A chantey ancient and immeasurable
Concerning man and God.

What memories of fog-spaces-
Wide leaden deserts of dim wavelessness,
Smooth porpoise-broken glass
As gray as a dream upon despair's horizon;
What sailing soft till lo the shroud was lifted
And suddenly there came, as a great joy,
The blue sublimity of summer skies,
The azure mystery of happy heavens,
The passionate sweet parley of the breeze,
And dancing waves-that lured us on and on
Past islands above whose verdant mountain-
       heads
Enchanted clouds were hanging,
And whence wild spices wandered;
Past iridescent reefs and vessels bound
For ports unknown:
                     27

 
O far, far past, until the sun, in fire,
An impotent and shrunken orb lay dying,
On heaving twilight purple gathered round.



And then, what nights! . . .
The phantom moon in misty resurrection
Arising from her sepulchre in the East
And sparkling the dark waters-
The unremembering moon!
And covenants of star to faithful star,
Dewy, like tears of God, across the sky;
And under the moon's fair ring Orion running
Forever in great war adown the West.
What far, infinite nights!
With cloud-horizons where the lightning slum-
      bered
Or wakened once and again with startled
       watch,
Again to fall asleep
And leave the moon-path free for all my
       thoughts
To wander peacefully
Away and still away
Until the stars sighed out in dawn's great
       pallor,
Just as the lands of my desire appeared.



What memories . . . have I of it!
                    28

 
A SONG OF THE OLD VENETIANS



THE seven fleets of Venice
T    Set sail across the sea
For Cyprus and for Trebizond
Ayoub and Araby.
Their gonfalons are floating far,
St. Mark's has heard the mass,
And to the noon the salt lagoon
Lies white, like burning glass.

The seven fleets of Venice-
And each its way to go,
Led by a Falier or Tron,
Zorzi or Dandalo.
The Patriarch has blessed them all,
The Doge has waved the word,
And in their wings the murmurings
Of waiting winds are heard.

The seven fleets of Venice-
And what shall be their fate
One shall return with porphyry
And pearl and fair agate.
One shall return with spice and spoil
And silk of Samarcand.
But nevermore shall one win o'er
The sea, to any land.
               29

 
Oh, they shall bring the East back,
And they shall bring the West,
The seven fleets our Venice sets
A-sail upon her quest.
But some shall bring despair back
And some shall leave their keels
Deeper than wind or wave frets,
Or sun ever steals.




            BASKING

G IVE me a spot in the sun,
      With a lizard basking bv me,
 In Sicily, over the sea,
 Where Winter is sweet as Spring,
Where Etna lifts his plume
  Of curling smoke to try me,
But all in vain for I will not climb
  His height so ravishing.

Give me a spot in the sun,
  So high on a cliff that, under,
Far down, the flecking sails
  Like white moths flit the blue;
That over me on a crag
                 30

 

   There hangs, 0 aery wonder,
A white town drowsing in its nest
  That cypress-tops peep thro.

Give me a spot in the sun,
  With contadini singing,
And a goat-boy at his pipes
  And donkey bells heard round
Upon steep mountain paths
  Where a peasant cart comes swinging
'Mid joyous hot invectives-that
  So blameless here abound.

Give me a spot in the sun,
  In a land whose speech is flowers,
Whose breath is Hybla-sweet,
  Whose soul is still a faun's,
Whose limbs the sea enlaps,
  Thro long delicious hours,
With liquid tenderness and light
  Sweet as Elysian dawns.

Give me a spot in the sun
  With a view past vale and villa,
Past grottoed isle and sea
  To Italy and the Cape
Around whose turning lies
                 31

 
     Old heathen-hearted Scylla,
  Whom may an ancient sailor prayed
    The gods he might escape.

  Give me a spot in the sun:
    With sly old Pan as lazy
  As I, ever to tempt me
    To disbelief and doubt
  Of all gods else, from Jove
     To Bacchus born wine-crazy.
  Give me, I say, a spot in the sun,
     And Realms I'll do without!



     SAPPHO'S DEATH SONG
        (On her sea-cliff in Leucady)

W    HAT have I gathered the years did not
      take f rom me
  (Swallows, hear, as you fly from the cold!)
Whom have I bound to me never to break
      from me
  (Whom, 0 wind of the wold)
Whom, 0 wind! 0 hunter of spirits!
  (Pierce his spirit whose spear is in mine!)
Then let Oblivion loose this ache from me,
        Proserpine!

                   32

 
Lyre and the laurel the Muses gave to me,
  (Why comes summer when winter is nigh!)
Spent am I now and pain-voices rave to me.
  (O sea and its cry!)
0 the sea that has suffered all sorrow!
  (Sea of the Delphian tongue ever shrill!)
Nought from the wreck of love can now save
      to me
         Any thrill!

Life that we live passes pale or amorous.
  (Tread, 0 vintagers, grapes in the press!)
Mine's but a prey to Erinilyes clamorous.
  (O for wine that will bless!)
Wine that foams, but is free of all madness
  (Free, 0 Cypris, of fury's breath!)
Free as I now shall be, 0 glamorous
         Queen of Death!


         THE WIND'S WORD

 A STAR that I love,
 iAX The sea, and I,
 Spake together across the night.
 "Have peace," said the star,
 "Have power," said the sea;
 "Yea!" I answered, "and Fame's delight!"
                    33

 

  The wind on his way
  To Araby
Paused and listened and sighed and said,
  "I passed on the sands
  A Pharaoh's tomb:
All these did he have-and he is dead."


     SUBMARINE MOUNTAINS

UNDER the sea, which is their sky, they
      rise
  To watery altitudes as vast as those
  Of far HimAlayan peaks impent in snows
  And veils of cloud and sacred deep repose.
Under the sea, their flowing firmament,
  More dark than any ray of sun can pierce,
  The earthquake thrust them up with mighty
      tierce
And left them to be seen but by the eyes
Of aw. ed imagination inward bent.

Their vegetation is the viscid ooze,
  Whose mysteries are past belief or thought.
  Creation seems around them devil-wrought,
  Or by some cosmic urgence gone dis-
      traught.
Adown their precipices chill and dense

                    34

 
  With the dank midnight creep or crapvl or
      climb
  Such tentacled and eyeless things of slime,
Such monster shapes as tempt us to accuse
Life of a miscreative impotence.

About their peaks the shark, their eagle, floats,
  In the thick azure far beneath the air,
  Or downward sweeps upon what prey may
       dare
  Set forth from any silent weedy lair.
But one desire on all their slopes is found,
  Desire of food, the awful hunger strife,
  Yet here, it may be, was begun our life
Here all the dreams on which our vision dotes
In unevolved obscurity Xvere bound.

Too strange it is, too terrible! And yet
  It matters not how we were wrought or
       whence
  Life came to us with all its throb intense
  If in it is a Godly Immanence.
It matters not,-if haply we are more
  Than creatures half-conceived by a blind
       force
  That sweeps the universe in a chance course:
For only in Unmeaning Might is met
The intolerable thought none can ignore.
                     35

 
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-caves
Nor of content in them and home.
For that is the reason the hearts of men
Are ever weary-they would abide
Somewhere out of the spumy stride
Of the world's spindrift-a want denied.
That is the reason: tho tliey know
That the restive years have no true hom