In Divers Tones | Page 7

up twain, and make his bonds securer.?Seethes the startled sea now from the surging blade.?Leaps the dark ship forth, as we, with hearts grown surer,?Eyes averse, and war-worn faces made afraid,
O'er the waste warm reaches drive our prow, sea-cleaving,?Past the luring death, into the folding night.?Home shall hold us yet, and cease our wives from grieving,-- Safe from storm, and toil, and flame, and clanging fight.
A BALLADE OF CALYPSO.
The loud black flight of the storm diverges?Over a spot in the loud-mouthed main,?Where, crowned with summer and sun, emerges?An isle unbeaten of wind or rain.?And here, of its sweet queen grown full fain,--?By whose kisses the whole broad earth seems poor,--?Tarries the wave-worn prince, Troy's bane,?In the green Ogygian Isle secure.
To her voice our sweetest songs are dirges.?She gives him all things, counting it gain.?Ringed with the rocks and ancient surges,?How could Fate dissever these twain??But him no loves nor delights retain;?New knowledge, new lands, new loves allure;?Forgotten the perils, and toils, and pain,?In the green Ogygian Isle secure.
So he spurns her kisses and gifts, and urges?His weak skiff over the wind-vext plain,?Till the gray of the sky in the gray sea merges,?And nights reel round, and waver, and wane.?He sits once more in his own domain.?No more the remote sea-walls immure.--?But ah, for the love he shall clasp not again?In the green Ogygian Isle secure!
L'ENVOI.?Princes, and ye whose delights remain,?To the one good gift of the gods hold sure,?Lest ye too mourn, in vain, in vain,?Your green Ogygian Isle secure!
RAIN.
Sharp drives the rain, sharp drives the endless rain.?The rain-winds wake and wander, lift and blow.?The slow smoke-wreaths of vapor to and fro?Wave, and unweave, and gather and build again.?Over the far gray reaches of the plain--?Gray miles on miles my passionate thought must go,--?I strain my sight, grown dim with gazing so,?Pressing my face against the streaming pane.
How the rain beats! Ah God, if love had power?To voice its utmost yearning, even tho'?Thro' time and bitter distance, not in vain,?Surely Her heart would hear me at this hour,?Look thro' the years, and see! But would She know?The white face pressed against the streaming pane?
MIST.
Its hand compassionate guards our restless sight?Against how many a harshness, many an ill!?Tender as sleep, its shadowy palms distil?Weird vapors that ensnare our eyes with light.?Rash eyes, kept ignorant in their own despite,?It lets not see the unsightliness they will,?But paints each scanty fairness fairer still,?And still deludes us to our own delight.
It fades, regathers, never quite dissolves.?And ah that life, ah that the heart and brain?Might keep their mist and glamour, not to know?So soon the disenchantment and the pain!?But one by one our dear illusions go,?Stript and cast forth as time's slow wheel revolves.
THE TANTRAMAR REVISITED.
Summers and summers have come, and gone with the flight of the swallow; Sunshine and thunder have been, storm, and winter, and frost, Many and many a sorrow has all but died from remembrance,?Many a dream of joy fall'n in the shadow of pain.?Hands of chance and change have marred, or moulded, or broken, Busy with spirit or flesh, all I most have adored;?Even the bosom of Earth is strewn with heavier shadows,--?Only in these green hills, aslant to the sea, no change!?Here where the road that has climbed from the inland valleys and woodlands, Dips from the hill-tops down, straight to the base of the hills,-- Here, from my vantage-ground, I can see the scattering houses, Stained with time, set warm in orchards, and meadows, and wheat, Dotting the broad bright slopes outspread to southward and eastward, Wind-swept all day long, blown by the south-east wind.?Skirting the sunbright uplands stretches a riband of meadow, Shorn of the laboring grass, bulwarked well from the sea,?Fenced on its seaward border with long clay dikes from the turbid Surge and flow of the tides vexing the Westmoreland shores. Yonder, toward the left, lie broad the Westmoreland marshes,-- Miles on miles they extend, level, and grassy, and dim,?Clear from the long red sweep of flats to the sky in the distance, Save for the outlying heights, green-rampired Cumberland Point; Miles on miles outrolled, and the river-channels divide them,-- Miles on miles of green, barred by the hurtling gusts.
Miles on miles beyond the tawny bay is Minudie.?There are the low blue hills; villages gleam at their feet. Nearer a white sail shines across the water, and nearer?Still are the slim, gray masts of fishing boats dry on the flats. Ah, how well I remember those wide red flats, above tide-mark Pale with scurf of the salt, seamed and baked in the sun!?Well I remember the piles of blocks and ropes, and the net-reels Wound with the beaded nets, dripping and dark from the sea! Now at this season the nets are unwound; they hang from the rafters Over the fresh-stowed hay in upland