Sea Garden Part 1

Sea Garden.

by Hilda Doolittle.

SEA ROSE

Rose, harsh rose, marred and with stint of petals, meagre flower, thin, spa.r.s.e of leaf,

more precious than a wet rose single on a stem-- you are caught in the drift.

Stunted, with small leaf, you are flung on the sand, you are lifted in the crisp sand that drives in the wind.

Can the spice-rose drip such acrid fragrance hardened in a leaf?

THE HELMSMAN

O be swift-- we have always known you wanted us.

We fled inland with our flocks, we pastured them in hollows, cut off from the wind and the salt track of the marsh.

We worshipped inland-- we stepped past wood-flowers, we forgot your tang, we brushed wood-gra.s.s.

We wandered from pine-hills through oak and scrub-oak tangles, we broke hyssop and bramble, we caught flower and new bramble-fruit in our hair: we laughed as each branch whipped back, we tore our feet in half buried rocks and knotted roots and acorn-cups.

We forgot--we worshipped, we parted green from green, we sought further thickets, we dipped our ankles through leaf-mould and earth, and wood and wood-bank enchanted us--

and the feel of the clefts in the bark, and the slope between tree and tree-- and a slender path strung field to field and wood to wood and hill to hill and the forest after it.

We forgot--for a moment tree-resin, tree-bark, sweat of a torn branch were sweet to the taste.

We were enchanted with the fields, the tufts of coa.r.s.e gra.s.s in the shorter gra.s.s-- we loved all this.

But now, our boat climbs--hesitates--drops-- climbs--hesitates--crawls back-- climbs--hesitates-- O be swift-- we have always known you wanted us.

THE SHRINE

("SHE WATCHES OVER THE SEA")

I

Are your rocks shelter for ships-- have you sent galleys from your beach, are you graded--a safe crescent-- where the tide lifts them back to port-- are you full and sweet, tempting the quiet to depart in their trading ships?

Nay, you are great, fierce, evil-- you are the land-blight-- you have tempted men but they perished on your cliffs.

Your lights are but dank shoals, slate and pebble and wet sh.e.l.ls and seaweed fastened to the rocks.

It was evil--evil when they found you, when the quiet men looked at you-- they sought a headland shaded with ledge of cliff from the wind-blast.

But you--you are unsheltered, cut with the weight of wind-- you shudder when it strikes, then lift, swelled with the blast-- you sink as the tide sinks, you shrill under hail, and sound thunder when thunder sounds.

You are useless-- when the tides swirl your boulders cut and wreck the staggering ships.

II

You are useless, O grave, O beautiful, the landsmen tell it--I have heard-- you are useless.

And the wind sounds with this and the sea where rollers shot with blue cut under deeper blue.

O but stay tender, enchanted where wave-lengths cut you apart from all the rest-- for we have found you, we watch the splendour of you, we thread throat on throat of freesia for your shelf.

You are not forgot, O plunder of lilies, honey is not more sweet than the salt stretch of your beach.

III

Stay--stay-- but terror has caught us now, we pa.s.sed the men in ships, we dared deeper than the fisher-folk and you strike us with terror O bright shaft.

Flame pa.s.ses under us and sparks that unknot the flesh, sorrow, splitting bone from bone, splendour athwart our eyes and rifts in the splendour, sparks and scattered light.

Many warned of this, men said: there are wrecks on the fore-beach, wind will beat your ship, there is no shelter in that headland, it is useless waste, that edge, that front of rock-- sea-gulls clang beyond the breakers, none venture to that spot.

IV

But hail-- as the tide slackens, as the wind beats out, we hail this sh.o.r.e-- we sing to you, spirit between the headlands and the further rocks.

Though oak-beams split, though boats and sea-men flounder, and the strait grind sand with sand and cut boulders to sand and drift--

your eyes have pardoned our faults, your hands have touched us-- you have leaned forward a little and the waves can never thrust us back from the splendour of your ragged coast.

MID-DAY

The light beats upon me.

I am startled-- a split leaf crackles on the paved floor-- I am anguished--defeated.

A slight wind shakes the seed-pods-- my thoughts are spent as the black seeds.