All the ships of the world come here,
Rest a little and then are gone,
Over the crystal planet-sphere
Swept, thro every season, on.
Swept to every cape and isle
(Every coast of cloud or smile),
Swept till over them sweeps the sorrow
Of their last sea-dawn.
UNDER THE SKY
Far out to sea go the fishing junks,
With all sails set,
The tide swings gray and the clouds sway,
The wind blows wet;
Blows wet from the long coast lying dim
As if mist-born.
Far out they sail, as the stars pale,
The stars of morn.
Far out to sea go the fishing junks,
And I who pass
Upon a deck that is vaster reck
No more, alas,
Of all their life, or they of mine,
Than comes to this,—
That under the sky we live and die,
Like all that is.
A SONG FOR HEALING
(On the South Seas)
When I return to the world again,
The world of fret and fight,
To grapple with godless things and men,
In battle, wrong or right,
I will remember this—the sea,
And the white stars hanging high,
And the vessel's bow
Where calmly now
I gaze to the boundless sky.
When I am deaf with the din of strife,
And blind amid despair,
When I am choked with the dust of life
And long for free soul-air,
I will recall this sound—the sea's,
And the wide horizon's hope,
And the wind that blows
And the phosphor snows
That fall as the cleft waves ope.