SEA-MAD
(A Breton Maid)
Three waves of the sea came up on the wind to me!
One said:
"Away! he is dead!
Upon my foam I have flung his head!
Go back to your cote, you never shall wed!—
(Nor he!)"
Three waves of the sea came up on the wind to me.
Two brake.
The third with a quake
Cried loud, "O maid, I'll find for thy sake
His dead lost body: prepare his wake!"
(And back it plunged to the sea!)
Three waves of the sea came up on the wind to me.
One bore—
And swept on the shore—
His pale, pale face I shall kiss no more!
Ah, woe to women death passes o'er!
(Woe's me!)
THE ATHEIST
Over a scurf of rocks the tide
Wanders inward far and wide,
Lifting the sea-weed's sloven hair,
Filling the pools and foaming there,
Sighing, sighing everywhere.
Merged are the marshes, merged the sands,
Save the dunes with pine-tree hands
Stretching upward toward the sky,
Where the sun, their god, moves high:
Would I too had a god—yea, I!