PILGRIM
The cold wind cries across the rolling dunes,
The gray sails fleck the margins of the world:
I watch the rolling dunes along the barren sky,
And wan, white waters by the swift wind hurled.
O where are Queen Faustina, and Babylon, and Tyre,
And pale Troy, lost in a silver mist of tears—
And I, O earth, your child, more old than all these others,
What have you done to me these many thousand years!
BY THE GRAY SEA
Where the gray sea lay sad and vast
You turned your head away,
And we sat silently at last—
There was no word to say:
By the thunder,
By the iron thunder of the sea.
We could not speak, for the lost hope
Of the glad days before;
We sat beside the long sea-slope,
Watching the endless shore—
By the thunder,
By the iron thunder of the sea.
So that, as in the old despair,
I reached you pleading hands;
But you sat pale and helpless there,
Beside the barren sands:
By the thunder,
By the iron thunder of the sea!