Since first he shed
Their petals red
Through Persian gardens long ago,
When Omar heard
His muttered word
Rumoring things we may not know!
Our brother ghost,
He is a most
Incorrigible wanderer;
And still to-day
He takes his way
About my hills of spruce and fir;
Will neither bide
By the great tide,
In apple lands of Acadie,
Nor in the leaves
About your eaves,
Where Scituate looks out to sea.
About the time of Michael's feast
And all his angels,
There comes a word to man and beast
By dark evangels.
Then hearing what the wild things say
To one another,
Those creatures first born of our gray
Mysterious Mother,
The greatness of the world's unrest
Steals through our pulses;
Our own life takes a meaning guessed
From the torn dulse's.
The draft and set of deep sea-tides
Swirling and flowing,
Bears every filmy flake that rides,
Grandly unknowing.
The sunlight listens; thin and fine
The crickets whistle;
And floating midges fill the shine
Like a seeding thistle.