Take care, so near the horizon,
Or a phantom skipper, one who has long been drowned,
Will reach above it and seize you
And make you his sail to circle the world forever!
Take care, take care! for frailty
Is the prey of the strong, and you, a wraith of it,
Have yet a long while to go before nightfall
Brings you to sure effulgence!
PATHS
Crushing in my hand
The bay as I pass,
Drinking in its fragrance
With the sea's scent,
While gull-wings write
Poems white and fast
On the blue sky
That is soft with content;
Crushing in my hand
The bay and the juniper,
While I record
Each line the gulls write,
I go by sea paths
Down to the sea's edge,
I go by heart paths
Deep into delight.
Simple is my joy
As the little sandpiper's,
Who follows beside me
With silvery song;
Blither than the breeze,
That skims great billows
Nor knows how deep
Is their flow—or strong.
Simple is my joy,
A sunny sense-sweetness,
Full of bird-bliss,
Bay-warmth, spray-leap.
Mysteries there are
And miseries beneath it,
But sunk, like wrecks,
Far down in the deep.
FROM A NORTHERN BEACH
Is it because for a million years
The tide has entered here
From cold north seas
Where ice-floes freeze
That ever unto my ear
Primordial loneness in its voice
Comes telling of that time
When life was not, upon the earth,
But only glacier-rime?