Part 12 (1/2)

One wild gull on a wilder storm, Winging to keep her lone heart warm.

One wild gull by the surf--and I, Beaten by wind and rain and sky.

One wild gull in the offing lost, Wilder heart in my bosom tost.

One wild gull--O why but one!

Two, dear G.o.d, should there be--or none!

TO THE SEA

Are you enraged, O sea, with the blue peace Of heaven, so to uplift your armied waves, Your billowy rebellion against its ease, And with Tartarean mutter from cold caves, From shuddering profundities where shapes Of awe glide thro entangled leagues of ooze, To hoot your watery omens evermore, And evermore your moanings interfuse With seething necromancy and mad lore?

Or do you labour with the drifting bones Of countless dead, O mighty Alchemist, Within whose stormy crucible the stones Of sunk primordial sh.o.r.es, granite and schist, Are crumbled by your all-abrasive beat?

With immemorial chanting to the moon, And cosmic incantation, do you crave Rest to be found not till your wilds are strewn Frigid and desert over earth's last grave?

You seem drunk with immensity, mad, blind-- With raving deaf, with wandering forlorn, Parent of Demogorgon whose dire mind Is night and earthquake, shapeless shame and scorn Of the o'ermounting birth of Harmony.

Bound in your briny bed and gnawing earth With foamy writhing and fierce-panted tides, You are as Fate in torment of a dearth Of black disaster and destruction's strides.

And how you shatter silence from the world, Incarnate Motion of all mystery!

Whose waves are fury-wings, whose winds are hurled Whither your Ghost tempestuous can see A desolate apocalypse of death.

Yea, how you shatter silence from the world, With emerald overflowing, waste on waste Of flas.h.i.+ng susurration, dashed and swirled On isles and continents that shrink abased!

And yet, O veering veil of the Unknown, Gathered from primal mist and firmament; O surging shape of Life's unfathomed moan, Whelming humanity with fears unmeant; Yet do I love you, far above all fear, And loving you unconquerably trust The runes that from your ageless surfing start Would read, were they revealed, gust upon gust, That Immortality is might of heart!

SEA-MAD

(_A Breton Maid_)

Three waves of the sea came up on the wind to me!

One said: ”Away! he is dead!

Upon my foam I have flung his head!

Go back to your cote, you never shall wed!-- (Nor he!)”

Three waves of the sea came up on the wind to me.

Two brake.

The third with a quake Cried loud, ”O maid, I'll find for thy sake His dead lost body: prepare his wake!”

(And back it plunged to the sea!)