THE WHITE GULL

For the Centenary of the birth of Shelley

UP by the idling reef-set bell

The tide comes in;

And to the idle heart to-day

The wind has many things to say;

The sea has many a tale to tell

His younger kin.

For we are his, bone of his bone,

Breath of his breath;

The doom tides sway us at their will;

The sky of being rounds us still;

And over us at last is blown

The wind of death.

A hundred years ago to-day

There came a soul,

A pilgrim of the perilous light,

Treading the spheral paths of night,

On whom the word and vision lay

With dread control.

Now the pale summer lingers near,

And talks to me

Of all her wayward journeyings,

And the old, sweet, forgotten things

She loved and lost and dreamed of here

By the blue sea.

The great cloud-navies, one by one,

Bend sails and fill

From ports below the round sea-verge;

I watch them gather and emerge,

And steer for havens of the sun

Beyond the hill.

The grey sea-horses troop and roam;

The shadows fly

Along the wind-floor at their heels;

And where the golden daylight wheels,

A white gull searches the blue dome

With keening cry.

And something, Shelley, like thy fame

Dares the wide moon

In that sea-rover's glimmering flight,

As if the Northland and the night

Should hear thy splendid valiant name

Put scorn to scorn.

III

Thou heart of all the hearts of men,

Tameless and free,

And vague as that marsh-wandering fire,

Leading the world's outworn desire

A night march down this ghostly fen

From sea to sea!

Through this divided camp of dream

Thy feet have passed,

As one who should set hand to rouse

His comrades from their heavy drowse;

For only their own deeds redeem

God's sons at last.

But the dim world will dream and sleep

Beneath thy hand,

As poppies in the windy morn,

Or valleys where the standing corn

Whispers when One goes forth to reap

The weary land.

O captain of the rebel host,

Lead forth and far!

Thy toiling troopers of the night

Press on the unavailing fight;

The sombre field is not yet lost,

With thee for star.

Thy lips have set the hail and haste

Of clarions free

To bugle down the wintry verge

Of time forever, where the surge

Thunders and crumbles on a waste

And open sea.

Did the cold Norns who pattern life

With haste and rest

Take thought to cheer their pilgrims on

Through trackless twilights vast and wan,

Across the failure and the strife,

From quest to quest,—

Set their last kiss upon thy face,

And let thee go

To tell the haunted whisperings

Of unimaginable things,

Which plague thy fellows with a trace

They cannot know?

So they might fashion and send forth

Their house of doom,

Through the pale splendor of the night,

In vibrant, hurled, impetuous flight,

A resonant meteor of the North

From gloom to gloom.

I think thou must have wandered far

With Spring for guide,

And heard the sky-born forest flowers

Talk to the wind among the showers,

Through sudden doorways left ajar

When the wind sighed;

Thou must have heard the marching sweep

Of blown white rain

Go volleying up the icy kills,—

And watched with Summer when the hills

Muttered of freedom in their sleep

And slept again.

Surely thou wert a lonely one,

Gentle and wild;

And the round sun delayed for thee

In the red moorlands by the sea,

When Tyrian Autumn lured thee on,

A wistful child,

To rove the tranquil, vacant year,

From dale to dale;

And the great Mother took thy face

Between her hands for one long gaze,

And bade thee follow without fear

The endless trail.

And thy clear spirit, half forlorn,

Seeking its own,

Dwelt with the nomad tents of rain,

Marched with the gold-red ranks of grain,

Or ranged the frontiers of the morn,

And was alone.

One brief perturbed and glorious day!

How couldst thou learn

The quiet of the forest sun,

Where the dark, whispering rivers run

The journey that hath no delay

And no return?

And yet within thee flamed and sang

The dauntless heart,

Knowing all passion and the pain

On man's imperious disdain,

Since God's great part in thee gave pang

To earth's frail part.

It held the voices of the hills

Deep in its core;

The wandering shadows of the sea

Called to it,—would not let it be;

The harvest of those barren rills

Was in its store.

Thine was a love that strives and calls

Outcast from home,

Burning to free the soul of man

With some new life. How strange, a ban

Should set thy sleep beneath the walls

Of changeless Rome!

VII

More soft, I deem, from spring to spring,

Thy sleep would be

Where this far western headland lies

With its imperial azure skies,

Under thee hearing beat and swing

The eternal sea.

Where all the livelong brooding day

And all night long,

The far sea-journeying wind should come

Down to the doorway of thy home,

To lure thee ever the old way

With the old song.

But the dim forest would so house

Thy heart so dear,

Even the low surf of the rain,

Where ghostly centuries complain,

Might beat against thy door and rouse

No heartache here.

For here the thrushes, calm, supreme,

Forever reign,

Whose gloriously kingly golden throats

Regather their forgotten notes

In keys where lurk no ruin of dream,

No tinge of pain.

And here the ruthless noisy sea,

With the tide's will,

The strong grey wrestler, should in vain

Put forth his hand on thee again—

Lift up his voice and call to thee,

And thou be still.

For thou hast overcome at last;

And fate and fear

And strife and rumour now no more

Vex thee by any wind-vexed shore,

Down the strewn ways thy feet have passed

Far, far from here.

VIII

Up by the idling, idling bell