Part 10 (1/2)

All day long in the spindrift swinging, Bird of the sea! bird of the sea!

How I would that I had thy winging-- How I envy thee!

How I would that I had thy spirit, So to careen, joyous to cry, Over the storm and never fear it!

Into the night that hovers near it!

Calm on a reeling sky!

All day long, and the night, unresting!

Ah! I believe thy every breath Means that life's best comes ever breasting Peril and pain and death!

AFTER THEIR PARTING

(_A Woman Speaks_)

You know that rock on a rocky coast, Where the moon came up, a ruined ghost, Distorted until her shape almost Seemed breaking?

Came up like a phantom silently And dropped her shroud on the red night sea, Then walked, a spectral mystery, Unwaking?

You know how, sudden, there came a change, When she had left the sea's low range, Its lurid crimson, stark and strange, Behind her?

How, sudden, her silver self shone thro, Tranquilly free of the earth's stained hue, And found a way where the clouds were few To bind her?

You know this? Then go back some day, When I have gone the moonless way, To that dark rock whereon we lay And waited; And when the moon has arisen free, Your soiling doubt shall fall from me, And eased of unrest your heart shall be, And sated.

A WORD'S MAGIC

Do you remember Etajima, And how, upon a moon-fogged sea, As ghostly as ever a tide shall be, We pa.s.sed an island silently?

And how a low voice in the gloom Of the temple pine-trees leaning there Said _sayonara_ to one somewhere Unseen in the shadow-haunted air?

Just _sayonara_: but it seemed The soul of all farewells that night, The sigh of all withdrawn delight, The sound of love's last rapture-rite.

And now, after long years, it comes Again from isles of memory To bring once more to birth in me The breath of all lost witchery.

Yes, one low word of parting, now Echoing, thro the fog of years, Has touched my heart with beauty's tears, And youth thro all things reappears.

SEA RHAPSODY

(_Out of Hong-kong_)

Never again, never again Did I hope to breathe such joy!

The sea is blue and the winds halloo Up to the sun ”Ahoy!”