Ride—though now the distant chase
Knows that we have slipped old Time,
Lift the love-light of your face,
Shake the bridle of this rhyme,
See, the flowers of night and day
Streaming past on either hand,
Ride into the eternal May,
Ride into the lovers' land.
THE ROCK POOL
I
Bright as a fallen fragment of the sky,
Mid shell-encrusted rocks the sea-pool shone,
Glassing the sunset-clouds in its clear heart,
A small enchanted world enwalled apart
In diamond mystery,
Content with its own dreams, its own strict zone
Of urchin woods, its fairy bights and bars,
Its daisy-disked anemones and rose-feathered stars.
II
Forsaken for awhile by that deep roar
Which works in storm and calm the eternal will,
Drags down the cliffs, bids the great hills go by
And shepherds their multitudinous pageantry,—
Here, on this ebb-tide shore
A jewelled bath of beauty, sparkling still,
The little sea-pool smiled away the sea,
And slept on its own plane of bright tranquillity.
III
A self-sufficing soul, a pool in trance,
Un-stirred by all the spirit-winds that blow
From o'er the gulfs of change, content, ere yet
On its own crags, which rough peaked limpets fret
The last rich colours glance,
Content to mirror the sea-bird's wings of snow,
Or feel in some small creek, ere sunset fails,
A tiny Nautilus hoist its lovely purple sails;
IV