DON JUAN
IT is Isis the mystery
Must be in love with me.
Here this round ball of earth
Where all the mountains sit
Solemn in groups,
And the bright rivers flit
Round them for girth.
Here the trees and troops
Darken the shining grass,
And many people pass
Plundered from heaven,
Many bright people pass,
Plunder from heaven.
What of the mistresses
What the beloved seven?
—They were but witnesses,
I was just driven.
Where is there peace for me?
Isis the mystery
Must be in love with me.
THE SEA
You, you are all unloving, loveless, you;
Restless and lonely, shaken by your own moods,
You are celibate and single, scorning a comrade even,
Threshing your own passions with no woman for
the threshing-floor,
Finishing your dreams for your own sake only,
Playing your great game around the world, alone,
Without playmate, or helpmate, having no one to
cherish,
No one to comfort, and refusing any comforter.
Not like the earth, the spouse all full of increase
Moiled over with the rearing of her many-mouthed
young;
You are single, you are fruitless, phosphorescent,
cold and callous,
Naked of worship, of love or of adornment,
Scorning the panacea even of labour,
Sworn to a high and splendid purposelessness
Of brooding and delighting in the secret of life's
goings,
Sea, only you are free, sophisticated.
You who toil not, you who spin not,
Surely but for you and your like, toiling
Were not worth while, nor spinning worth the
effort!
You who take the moon as in a sieve, and sift
Her flake by flake and spread her meaning out;
You who roll the stars like jewels in your palm,
So that they seem to utter themselves aloud;
You who steep from out the days their colour,
Reveal the universal tint that dyes
Their web; who shadow the sun's great gestures
and expressions
So that he seems a stranger in his passing;
Who voice the dumb night fittingly;
Sea, you shadow of all things, now mock us to
death with your shadowing.
BOURNEMOUTH