Sea Poems Part 5

"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 pa.s.sion 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 Ca.s.siopeia 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 s.p.a.ce,"

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 G.o.d _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 pa.s.sions, 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 compa.s.s-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 G.o.d._

_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, unp.r.o.ne to wander, Unp.r.o.ne to pierce to the world's end--and past it.