From rim to shimmering rim the sea
Is burnished like chalcedony.
The waves that set their lips to land
Scarce make a murmur on the sand.
The ships appear to poise between
Two voids of opalescent sheen.
Aye, here eternal calm seems set
In bland beatitude, and yet
A single potent hour, aye, less,
Can change this placid loveliness,
And cause, where life smiles fair and fain,
The raging demon death to reign!
MOONRISE BY THE SEA
Over the sea-rim peered the pallid moon
Out of a woven shroud
Of twilight purple, while their mighty tune
The breakers thundered loud.
No comrade star, only the mystery
Of that pale orb whose fire
Through immemorial nights has seemed to be
Fulfilled of dim desire.
And while its wan light drenched the foam-hid coasts,
To the low south wind's sigh
Methought the sad innumerable hosts
Of lovers dead went by;
And I was whelmed with sadness, with the sense
Of the immutable pathos of the years,
And how the sum of all love's opulence
Must be obscured by tears!
A SEA SONG
Dolphins under and sea-gulls over
The surge and shift of the dipping tide,
And you, my rover, my blithe sea-rover,
Sailing the path of the undenied.
In dreams I follow you, O my rover,
Wide, for the ways of the sea are wide;
Come back, come back when the voyage is over,—
Back to the heart of the long denied!