Chapter 2
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: 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 slumbered 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!
A SONG OF THE OLD VENETIANS
The seven fleets of Venice 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.
_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
Give me a spot in the sun, With a lizard basking by 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 There hangs, O 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 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_)
What have I gathered the years did not take from me? (Swallows, hear, as you fly from the cold!) Whom have I bound to me never to break from me? (Whom, O wind of the wold?) Whom, O wind! O hunter of spirits! (Pierce his spirit whose spear is in mine!) Then let Oblivion loose this ache from me, Proserpine!
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!) O 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, O vintagers, grapes in the press!) Mine's but a prey to Erinnyes clamorous. (O for wine that will bless!) Wine that foams, but is free of all madness (Free, O Cypris, of fury's breath!) Free as I now shall be, O glamorous Queen of Death!
THE WIND'S WORD
A star that I love, 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!" 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 awed 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 distraught. Adown their precipices chill and dense With the dank midnight creep or crawl 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 were 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.
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 they know That 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 eternity Into his heart and bid it stay, Swiftly again it slips away. Dance, and know that the will of Life Is the wind's will and the will of the tide, And who finds not a home in its strife Shall find no home on any side!
THE GREAT SEDUCER
Who looks too long from his window At the gray, wide, cold sea, Where breakers scour the beaches With fingers of sharp foam; Who looks too long thro the gray pane At the mad, wild, bold sea, Shall sell his hearth to a stranger And 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 lifted And 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 lantern Set 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 way They 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 ware Of bronze and porcelain set to snare, In K'u-Kiang! I saw strange streaming signs in black With gold and crimson on their back-- Opiate signs in an opiate street; Where the slip and patter of felt-shod feet Is old as the sun; And the temple door As cool and dark as the night.
And where dim lanterns, swinging there, As a lure to human grief and care, Half reveal and half conceal The 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 ear Buzzed haunting, hot and loud; I awoke and the sky was dun With awe and a dread that soon Went shuddering thro my heart, for I knew That it meant typhoon! typhoon!
In the harbour below, far down, The junks like fowl in a flock Were tossing in wingless terror, or fled Fluttering in from the shock. The city, a breathless bend Of roofs, by the water strewn, Lay silent and waiting, yet there was none Within it but said typhoon!
Then it came, like a million winds Gone mad immeasurably, A torrid and tortuous tempest stung By rape of the fair South Sea. And it swept like a scud escaped From 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 eyes And prayed for my soul to swoon: If ever I see God's face, let it Be guiltless of that typhoon!
PENANG
I want to go back to Singapore And ship along the Straits, To a bungalow I know beside Penang; Where cocoanut palms along the shore Are waving, and the gates Of Peace shut Sorrow out forevermore. I want to go back and hear the surf Come beating in at night, Like the washing of eternity over the dead. I want to see dawn fare up and day Go down in golden light; I want to go back to Penang! I want to go back!
I want to go back to Singapore And up along the Straits To the bungalow that waits me by the tide. Where the Tamil and Malay tell their lore At evening--and the fates Have set no soothless canker at life's core. I want to go back and mend my heart Beneath the tropic moon, While the tamarind-tree is whispering thoughts of sleep. I want to believe that Earth again With Heaven is in tune. I want to go back to Penang! I want to go back!
I want to go back to Singapore And ship along the Straits To the bungalow I left upon the strand. Where the foam of the world grows faint before It enters, and abates In meaning as I hear the palm-wind pour. I want to go back and end my days Some evening when the Cross On the southern sky hangs heavily far and sad. I want to remember when I die That 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 sky Follows the sun home. Long nights when the mild monsoon Is breaking south-by-west, And when soft clouds and the singing shrouds Make all that is seem best.
Nights on the Indian Ocean, Long nights of space and dream, When silent Sirius round the Pole Swings on, with steady gleam; When oft the pushing prow Seems pressing where before No prow has ever pressed--or shall From hence forevermore.
Nights on the Indian Ocean, Long nights--with land at last, Dim land, dissolving the long sea-spell Into a sudden past-- That seems as far away As this our life shall seem When under the shadow of death's shore We 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 ghost Before 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 now There 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 yet I 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 clear From 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 eyes Under the drunken sweetness of the moon!
O heart, my heart, drink deeply ere they die, The sunset dome, the minaret, the dreams Flashing afar from youth's returnless streams: For we, my heart, must grow old, you and I!
"ALL'S WELL"
I
The 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 prow Of a great ship that steered into the stars, I stood and felt the awe upon my brow Of death and destiny and all that mars.
II
The wind that blew from Cassiopeia cast Wanly upon my ear a rune that rung; The sailor in his eyrie on the mast Sang an "All's well," that to the spirit clung Like a lost voice from some aerial realm Where 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 dull Building this world that bears a piteous race? O was it launched too soon or launched too late? Or can it be a derelict that drifts Beyond thy ken toward some reef of Fate On which Oblivion's sand forever shifts?"
IV
The sea grew softer as I questioned--calm With 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 stun The soul, and knowledge drown within their deep, There is no world that wanders, no not one Of all the millions, that He does not keep.
SOMNAMBULISM
I
Night is above me, And Night is above the night. The sea is beside me soughing, or is still. The earth as a somnambulist moves on In a strange sleep ... A sea-bird cries. And the cry wakes in me Dim, dead sea-folk, my sires-- Who more than myself are me. Who sat on their beach long nights ago and saw The sea in its silence; And cursed it or implored; Or with the Cross defied; Then on the morrow in their boats went down.
II
Night 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 farewell To the flotsam borne so long upon its breast. Rocks ... But the tide is out, And the slime lies naked, like a thing ashamed That 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 bow On which I stand alone and wonder how Men ever dream of ports beyond the bars Of 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 sky On which eternity to life awakes.
The universe is spread before my face, Worlds where perchance a million seas like this Are flowing and where tides of pain and bliss Find, as on earth, so prevalent a place That nothing of their wont we there should miss. The Universe, that man has dared to say Is but one Being--ah, courageous thought! Which is so vast that hope itself is fraught With shame, while saying it, and shrinks away.
Shrinks, even as now! For clouds sweep up the skies And darken the wide waters circling round, From out whose deep arises the old sound Of Terror unto which no tongue replies But Faith--that nothing ever shall confound. Not only pagan Perseus but the Cross Is shrouded--with wild wind and wilder rain, That on me beat until my soul again Sings unsurrendering to fears of Loss.
For this I know,--yea, tho all else lie hid Uncharted on the waters of our fate, All lands of Whence or Whither, whose estate In vain imagination seeks to thrid, Yet cannot, for the fog within Death's gate,-- This thing I know, that life, whatever its Source Or 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 wavers Over lone waters round, Then with a cry that quavers Is gone--a spectral sound.
The brown sad sea-weed drifting Far from the land, and lost. The faint warm fog unlifting, The derelict long-tossed, But now at rest--tho haunted By the death-scenting shark, Whose prey no more undaunted Slips from it, spent and stark.
SEA LURE
(_The Maine Coast_)
It is so, O sea! wild roses Bloom 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 closes With a thirst for you unquenched. And over your cliffs they clamber, And over your vast they gaze; For the tides of you can enamour Even them with their woodland ways.
Yea, the passion of you and the power And the largeness are a lure To even the heart of a flower, O sea, with a heart unsure! For love is a thing unsated, Nor ever in any breast Has it dwelt, all want abated, At rest.
SONGS TO A. H. R.
I
MINGLINGS
It is the old old vision, The moonlit sea--and you. I cannot make disseverance Between the two. For all the world's wide beauty To me you seem, All that I love in shadow Or glow or gleam.