In drowsy splendor and serene repose,
Unspotted by a sail, touched as a harp
By winds to drowsy monotone, the sea-
Strong in its unawakened strength, superb
In peace of tired waters, lies once more
Before our feet. Once more the summer sun
Beats on the sand and plays upon the sea
Rippling far off, as on a maiden's hair.
There is no sound save the unceasing murmur
Of sleepy waves that swish in ebb and flow
Like satin robes at some great festival.
No stir, nor sign of life-only the air
Warm with the sunlight, idling in the reeds
And purple flowers of the dunes. All life
Is sleeping in the calm of windless days,
And you and I-out of our noisy world
And year of struggles and of loneliness,
Stand once again beside the mighty sea.
Through the soft stillness low I hear you sing:
The winds call out across the sea
Of storm and wreck and woe,-
But my love and I
Hear not their cry,
Hear only their song as it quivers by,
Over the waters' flow.
The winds sing out across the sea,
And their song is of untold things-
But my love and I
For the song is of ages long gone by,—
And tales of distant hopes it brings
And vague rememberings.
Love, you and I are children of the sea,
Bound to its charm through time interminable
By fetters long forgotten. You and I
Since our love's birth have watched beside the sea,—
Living our lives, while the great billows thundered
Judgment of blame or praise. We two have learnt
The sea's deep mysteries and hidden ways;
The secrets of its anger and its strength,
The stirring message of Jehovic calms
Unfathomably silent, while the wild.
Deep orchestra of waters has been mute
Between gigantic symphonies of storm.
The sea has told us dark, remembered things
Of ancient times and citadels and towns
On long forgotten islands. It has sung
Of summer nights on warm Ionian shores,
Of garlands and the flow of silver harps
And whirr of dancing feet. The sea has told
Dark tales of wreck on cold Norwegian cliff
And unmarked tropic isle; low murmured tales
Of foundered ships, and vessels unreturning,
Remembered through the years only by those
Whose eyes pierced the gray mist and found them not.
Into the beating surf I hear you sing:
Into thine arms, into thine arms,
My fisher-boy lover has gone, O Sea!
Ay, take him for pleasure and take him for toil,
But send him back to me.
Full many a noble lord hast thou,
Imprisoned in thy dark demesne—
But there's only a single fisher-boy
That calls me queen.
O, take the kings and the princes all,
Take the gallant knights and the lords for thy joy,— But lady of tempests, great sister of Death,
Once through the cold dark night you waited here
Alone beside the sea. Tempest and rain
And stinging winds that sent the billows' crest
Flying far off, beat like a thousand whips
Of knotted cords upon your fair flushed face.
Upon your cheeks the rain-drenched curls lay matted
Like moss upon the rose; in your deep eyes
Rain and your tears fought out the truceless struggle,
Like wind and billow there before your sight,
Upon the dismal ocean of your love.
You heard the press of shouting men around you
Speaking of things incomprehensible
In words like empty drum-beats to your ears.
You saw their faces but you knew them not.
You spoke to them, replied, yet all the while
You stood alone in the great world that held you,
Hearing one voice, seeing one storm-veiled figure
Invisible on some wind-captured ship
Between the cliff-line and the farther sea.
And I, waiting there, waiting, waiting, through the chill
Impenetrable night for dawn that came not,
And friendly, helpless hands of men that came not,
Felt your white spirit blown across my sight
Through the wet mists of spray; and the low words
You sang a hundred times-as now you sing them—
When pleasant seas grew waste, moaned in my ears:
Did not the wind have a song When you and I heard it together? It blows so wild and strong,
I know not whether
My heart is too weak to hear
These undreamt notes of our wonder-mere,
Into the tones has crept a grief or wrong.
I hear no song-
Only the tempest whirring round my head,
And the great winds low-moaning in the heather
Because their song is dead.
Love, in the distant magic of the years
Beyond the sorrows, and the hollow heart-beats
Of human love and human loneliness,
As first-created man I brooded here
In silence on the sands. I saw the sea
Spreading its circles to the azure sky,
Bound by ethereal shores that bound not; saw
White moils of surf, and billows crowned with white
Flinging their harps of spray into the air,
Spring-burdened, while the sun played sudden chords
Of color-music on their wave-born strings.
I saw the heaving breast of distant waters
Caught by the sunshine in alternate change
Of dazzling glow, and shadow smooth and sunken; I heard the breakers beat and beat again,
And far away, the sharp call of a gull
Drooping upon a crest.
Across the sea a spirit seemed to glide,-
Nearer and nearer, touching crest and crest,
Shadow and shadow, each resplendent warp
Of sea-harps, each untrammeled cataract
Of breakers hurrying to the warm white sands.
And as it came it grew to wondrous brightness,
And held me mute as one that sees the skies
Unportalled, and beyond views all the magic
That earthly sense half felt, yet could not reach.
The spirit breathed upon my eyes, and touched
My lips and hands, soft it enveloped me-
"Thought of the Beautiful am I," it cried,-
And as I raised my eyes to the great world,
My heart sang low and called it beautiful.
And, love, because man is too weak and frail
And bound with imperfections, to pursue
All the great visions that the earth reveals;
Because the very splendor of the world,
Its tempests and its struggles, blinds his soul
To the great spirit of the beautiful-
There on the sands beside the wondrous sea
Spirit took form. Out of the mystic vapour
I saw your face break like the evening star,
I saw your body rising like a sun.
Into the oncoming darkness soft you led me,
Into the shadows and the night you led me,
And where you went the world was beautiful.
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