All day long in the spindrift swinging,
Bird of the sea! bird of the sea!
How I would that I had thy winging—
How I envy thee!
How I would that I had thy spirit,
So to careen, joyous to cry,
Over the storm and never fear it!
Into the night that hovers near it!
Calm on a reeling sky!
All day long, and the night, unresting!
Ah! I believe thy every breath
Means that life's best comes ever breasting
Peril and pain and death!
AFTER THEIR PARTING
(A Woman Speaks)
You know that rock on a rocky coast,
Where the moon came up, a ruined ghost,
Distorted until her shape almost
Seemed breaking?
Came up like a phantom silently
And dropped her shroud on the red night sea,
Then walked, a spectral mystery,
Unwaking?
You know how, sudden, there came a change,
When she had left the sea's low range,
Its lurid crimson, stark and strange,
Behind her?
How, sudden, her silver self shone thro,
Tranquilly free of the earth's stained hue,
And found a way where the clouds were few
To bind her?
You know this? Then go back some day,
When I have gone the moonless way,
To that dark rock whereon we lay
And waited;
And when the moon has arisen free,
Your soiling doubt shall fall from me,
And eased of unrest your heart shall be,
And sated.