John Marr and Other Poems | Page 9

Clipper
Come out of the Golden Gate,
Go round the Horn with streamers,

Carry royals early and late;
But, brother, be not over-elate--
All
hands save ship! has startled dreamers.
THE TUFT OF KELP
All dripping in tangles green,
Cast up by a lonely sea
If purer for
that, O Weed,
Bitterer, too, are ye?
THE MALDIVE SHARK
About the Shark, phlegmatical one,
Pale sot of the Maldive sea,
The
sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim,
How alert in attendance be.

From his saw-pit of mouth, from his charnel
of maw
They have nothing of harm to dread,
But liquidly glide on
his ghastly flank
Or before his Gorgonian head:
Or lurk in the port
of serrated teeth
In white triple tiers of glittering gates,
And there
find a haven when peril's abroad,
An asylum in jaws of the Fates!


They are friends; and friendly they guide him
to prey,
Yet never partake of the treat--
Eyes and brains to the
dotard lethargic and
dull,
Pale ravener of horrible meat.
TO NED
Where is the world we roved, Ned Bunn?
Hollows thereof lay rich in
shade
By voyagers old inviolate thrown
Ere Paul Pry cruised with
Pelf and Trade.
To us old lads some thoughts come home
Who
roamed a world young lads no more shall
roam.
Nor less the satiate year impends
When, wearying of routine-resorts,

The pleasure-hunter shall break loose,
Ned, for our Pantheistic
ports:--
Marquesas and glenned isles that be
Authentic Edens in a
Pagan sea.
The charm of scenes untried shall lure,
And, Ned, a legend urge the
flight--
The Typee-truants under stars
Unknown to Shakespere's
_MidsummerNight;
_
And man, if lost to Saturn's Age,
Yet feeling life no Syrian
pilgrimage.
But, tell, shall he, the tourist, find
Our isles the same in violet-glow

Enamoring us what years and years--
Ah, Ned, what years and years
ago!
Well, Adam advances, smart in pace,
But scarce by violets that
advance you trace.
But we, in anchor-watches calm,
The Indian Psyche's languor won,

And, musing, breathed primeval balm
From Edens ere yet overrun;

Marvelling mild if mortal twice,
Here and hereafter, touch a Paradise.

CROSSING THE TROPICS
From "The Saya-y-Manto."
While now the Pole Star sinks from sight
The Southern Cross it
climbs the sky;
But losing thee, my love, my light,
O bride but for
one bridal night,
The loss no rising joys supply.
Love, love, the Trade Winds urge abaft,
And thee, from thee, they
steadfast waft.
By day the blue and silver sea
And chime of waters blandly fanned--

Nor these, nor Gama's stars to me
May yield delight since still for
thee
I long as Gama longed for land.
I yearn, I yearn, reverting turn,
My heart it streams in wake astern

When, cut by slanting sleet, we swoop
Where raves the world's
inverted year,
If roses all your porch shall loop,
Not less your heart
for me will droop
Doubling the world's last outpost drear.
O love, O love, these oceans vast:
Love, love, it is as death were past!
THE BERG
A Dream
I SAW a ship of martial build
(Her standards set, her brave apparel on)

Directed as by madness mere
Against a stolid iceberg steer,
Nor
budge it, though the infatuate ship went
down.
The impact made huge ice-cubes fall
Sullen, in tons that
crashed the deck;
But that one avalanche was all
No other
movement save the foundering
wreck.
Along the spurs of ridges pale,
Not any slenderest shaft and frail,
A
prism over glass--green gorges lone,
Toppled; nor lace of traceries
fine,
Nor pendant drops in grot or mine
Were jarred, when the
stunned ship went

down.
Nor sole the gulls in cloud that wheeled
Circling one
snow-flanked peak afar,
But nearer fowl the floes that skimmed

And crystal beaches, felt no jar.
No thrill transmitted stirred the lock

Of jack-straw needle-ice at base;
Towers undermined by
waves--the block
Atilt impending--kept their place.
Seals, dozing
sleek on sliddery ledges
Slipt never, when by loftier edges
Through
very inertia overthrown,
The impetuous ship in bafflement went
down.
Hard Berg (methought), so cold, so vast,
With mortal damps
self-overcast;
Exhaling still thy dankish breath--
Adrift dissolving,
bound for death;
Though lumpish thou, a lumbering one--
A
lumbering lubbard loitering slow,
Impingers rue thee and go down,

Sounding thy precipice below,
Nor stir the slimy slug that sprawls

Along thy dense stolidity of walls.
THE ENVIABLE ISLES
From "Rammon."
Through storms you reach them and from
storms are free.
Afar descried, the foremost drear in hue,
But,
nearer, green; and, on the marge, the sea
Makes thunder low and mist
of rainbowed
dew.
But, inland, where the sleep that folds the hills
A dreamier sleep, the
trance of God, instills--
On uplands hazed, in wandering airs

aswoon,
Slow-swaying palms salute love's cypress tree
Adown in
vale where pebbly runlets croon
A song to lull all sorrow and all glee.
Sweet-fern and moss in many a glade are here.
Where, strewn in
flocks, what cheek-flushed
myriads lie
Dimpling in
dream--unconscious slumberers
mere,
While billows endless round the beaches die.
PEBBLES

I
Though the Clerk of the Weather insist,
And lay down the
weather-law,
Pintado and gannet they wist
That the winds blow
whither they list
In tempest or flaw.
II
Old are the creeds, but stale the schools,
Revamped as the mode
may veer,
But Orm from the schools to the beaches
strays
And, finding a Conch hoar with time, he
delays
And reverent lifts it to ear.
That Voice, pitched in far
monotone,
Shall it swerve? shall it deviate ever?
The Seas