THE MIST AND THE SEA
The mist crept in from the sea
Out of the void and the vast;
And it bore the silver rain
A shimmering guest in its train,
And many a murmuring strain
Of the ships that sailed in the past;
Soft as sleep's footfalls be
The mist crept in from the sea.
The mist crept in from the sea
And folded the length of the shore
In the clasp of its mothering arms
As though it would shield from harms;
And lulled were the loud alarms,
And lost was the rage and roar
Of the surge, so soothingly
The mist crept in from the sea.
The mist crept in from the sea,
White, impalpable, strange;
Pull of the wafture of wings,
Of eerie and eldritch things,
Of visions and vanishings
Ever in shift and change;
Silently, hauntingly,
The mist crept in from the sea.
The mist crept in from the sea,
And bode for a space, and then
It heard the imperious call
Of the deep, transcending all,
And it knew itself as the thrall
Of the world-old master of men,
So, still as the dreams that flee,
The mist crept back to the sea.
DIRGE FOR A SAILOR
Beyond the bourns of time and sleep,
Beyond the sway of tides,
A voyager o'er death's darksome deep,
His ship at anchor rides.
He who from boyhood never knew
A garden save the foam,
Whose only rooftree was the blue,
At last has found a home.
And what more fit than that the wave
He loved through life to stem
Should sing above his green sea grave
This sailor's requiem!
BAG-PIPES AT SEA
Above the shouting of the gale,
The whipping sheet, the dashing spray,
I heard, with notes of joy and wail,
A piper play.
Along the dipping deck he trod,
The dusk about his shadowy form;
He seemed like some strange ancient god
Of song and storm.
He gave his dim-seen pipes a skirl
And war went down the darkling air;
Then came a sudden subtle swirl,
And love was there.
What were the winds that flailed and flayed
The sea to him, the night obscure?
In dreams he strayed some brackened glade,
Some heathery moor.
And if he saw the slanting spars,
And if he watched the shifting track,
He marked, too, the eternal stars
Shine through the wrack.
And so amid the deep sea din,
And so amid the wastes of foam,
Afar his heart was happy in
His highland home!