From The Lips of the Sea, Clinton Scollard [color ebook reader .txt] 📗

CONTENTS


SEA MARVELS
THE MIST AND THE SEA
DIRGE FOR A SAILOR
BAG-PIPES AT SEA
THE WIND AND THE SEA
THE TIDES
A SEA ROVER
THE MIST BARQUE
A SEA SHELL
NIGHT SONG BY THE SEA
WILD GEESE
A SEA CHANGE
SAINT SEPULCHRE'S BESIDE THE SEA
SEA LYRICS
DAWN, THE HARVESTER
THE LILAC SEA
A SAILOR AMID THE HILLS
SUMMER BY THE SEA
DUSK AT SEA
THE SPEECH OF THE SEA
NIGHT BY THE SEA
AUTUMN BY THE SEA
MIST AT SEA
A SEA SCENE
MOONRISE BY THE SEA
A SEA SONG
A SYMPHONY OF THE SEA


If thou wouldst win the rhythmic heart of things,
Go sit in solitude beside the shore,
Giving thine ear to the eternal roar
And every mystic message that it brings; -
Eddas of ancient, unremembered kings,
And runes that ring with long-forgotten lore,
All myths and mysteries from the years of yore
Ere Time grew weary on his journeyings.

And more from that imperious sibyl, Sea,
Thou mayest learn if thou wilt hearken well,
When God's white star-fires beacon home the ships;
The solemn secrets of infinity,
Unto the inner sense translatable,
Hang trembling ever on her darkling lips.


SEA MARVELS


This morning more mysterious seems the sea
Than yesterday when, with reverberant roar,
It charged upon the beaches, and the sky
Above it shimmered cloudless. Now the waves
Lap languorously along the foamless sand,
And till the far horizon swims in mist.
Out of this murk, across this oily sweep,
Might lost armadas grandly sail to shore;
Jason might oar on Argo, or the stern
Surge-wanderer from Ithaca's bleak isle
Break on the sight, or Viking prows appear,
And still not waken wonder. Aye, the sound
Of siren singing might drift o'er the main,
And yet not fall upon amazèd ears!
The soul is ripe for marvels. O great deep,
Give up your host of stately presences,
Adventurers and sea-heroes of old time,
And let them pass before us down the day
In proud procession, so that we who hear
Dull bells mark off the uneventful hours
May glimpse the bygone bravery of the world
Now moiling in its multitudinous marts,
Forgetful of fair faith and high resolve
In the inglorious grapple after gold!


THE MIST AND THE SEA


The mist crept in from the sea
Out of the void and the vast;
And it bore the silver rain
A shimmering guest in its train,
And many a murmuring strain
Of the ships that sailed in the past;
Soft as sleep's footfalls be
The mist crept in from the sea.

The mist crept in from the sea
And folded the length of the shore
In the clasp of its mothering arms
As though it would shield from harms;
And lulled were the loud alarms,
And lost was the rage and roar
Of the surge, so soothingly
The mist crept in from the sea.

The mist crept in from the sea,
White, impalpable, strange;
Pull of the wafture of wings,
Of eerie and eldritch things,
Of visions and vanishings
Ever in shift and change;
Silently, hauntingly,
The mist crept in from the sea.

The mist crept in from the sea,
And bode for a space, and then
It heard the imperious call
Of the deep, transcending all,
And it knew itself as the thrall
Of the world-old master of men,
So, still as the dreams that flee,
The mist crept back to the sea.


DIRGE FOR A SAILOR

Beyond the bourns of time and sleep,
Beyond the sway of tides,
A voyager o'er death's darksome deep,
His ship at anchor rides.

He who from boyhood never knew
A garden save the foam,
Whose only rooftree was the blue,
At last has found a home.

And what more fit than that the wave
He loved through life to stem
Should sing above his green sea grave
This sailor's requiem!


BAG-PIPES AT SEA


Above the shouting of the gale,
The whipping sheet, the dashing spray,
I heard, with notes of joy and wail,
A piper play.

Along the dipping deck he trod,
The dusk about his shadowy form;
He seemed like some strange ancient god
Of song and storm.

He gave his dim-seen pipes a skirl
And war went down the darkling air;
Then came a sudden subtle swirl,
And love was there.

What were the winds that flailed and flayed
The sea to him, the night obscure?
In dreams he strayed some brackened glade,
Some heathery moor.

And if he saw the slanting spars,
And if he watched the shifting track,
He marked, too, the eternal stars
Shine through the wrack.

And so amid the deep sea din,
And so amid the wastes of foam,
Afar his heart was happy in
His highland home!


THE WIND AND THE SEA


Never the long wind dieth,
Never, never,
But sigheth, crieth,
In its old endeavor,
Where the shifting sand and shingle
Meet and mingle,
And the lifting land and the surge of the waters sever!

Never the long wind faileth.
Never, never,
But still availeth
In its old endeavor;
Mortals, the changeful-hearted,
May be parted,
But the wind and the sea are wedded forever and ever!


THE TIDES


Through rush and reed
The long, strong tides recede,
Jostle and surge,
And toss and urge,
And foam and merge,
Where lily roots shine bright like bronzen brede.

"Haste! haste!"
That is their cry;
Back to the mother waste
They fleet, they fly,
Again to be embraced -
Again to be a part
Of that great heart!

As set the tides, so we,
After the stress and roar
Along life's shore,
Shall one day set toward the eternal sea!


A SEA ROVER


The breakers dash, the breakers boom,
Upon the beaches ceaselessly;
Beyond the line of flying spume
Stretch weltering wastes of sea.

There gray gulls hold their loud carouse,
The four great winds rejoice or mourn,
There go deep barques, with plunging prows,
On far adventures borne.

That one, with streaming pennon, seeks
The golden gates that guard the morn,
That one the perilous island peaks
Beyond the stormy Horn.

My fancy sails with each and all,
Unleashed, untrammeled, unconfined;
There is no bond, there is no thrall,
Can chain the roving mind!


THE MIST BARQUE


Over the wave-rim faint and far
(Spectral sail and ghostly spar)
Through the mist-banks a vessel glides
Biding the ridge of the tossing tides.

Is it Van der Deeken again,
Scourge of the sea, with his evil men,
Come to wreak some murky spell
Out of the yawn of the gulfs of Hell?

Thus it seems that the craft might be,
With its shifting shroud of mystery,
Forth from the unknown weirdly cast,
Into the unknown fading fast.

Now no sign of it near or far,
Spectral sail or ghostly spar!
Yet shall I dream of it shudderingly,
Vanished, eldritch ship of the sea,

Fearful lest some barque be borne
In wake of the wraith (ah, hearts that mourn!)
Through the power of its fatal spell
Into the yawn of the gulfs of Hell.


A SEA SHELL


You speak to me
Of the long plunge and welter of the sea;
Likewise you are
Oracular
Of its low melody.
You voice its laughing moods,
Its lyric interludes,
Its secrecies, its sorceries, its mysteries,
Its tragic histories.
Aye, all that it has breathed, may breathe, shall breathe,
You unto me bequeath;
Thus am I made the fair inheritor
Of that rare essence of true harmony
Which many a land-girt exile hungers for, -
The sea!


NIGHT SONG BY THE SEA


Wind and rain are at the pane,
Shrilling, drumming without cease;
And the breakers' loud refrain
Gives the shuddering heart no peace.
Lord of all the things that be,
Pity Thou the souls at sea!

Snugly roofed with warmth and glow,
And encompassed soft by sleep,
Little we land-dwellers know
Of the terrors of the deep.
Lord, in Thy sweet charity,
Pity Thou the souls at sea!

On the smiling face of morn
Sure are we to gaze again;
What of those poor waifs forlorn