TO ONE RETURNED FROM A JOURNEY
You have come home with old seas in your speech,
And glimmering sea-roads meeting in your mind:
The curve of creeping silver up the beach,
And mornings whose white splendours daze and blind.
You have brought word of ships and where they go,
Their names like music, and the flags they fly:
Steamer ... and barque ... and churning tug and tow,
And a lone sail at sunset blowing by.
Shoreline and mist have still their ancient way:
Through all your speech the sea's long rise and fall
Sound their slow musics in the words you say:—
And I who sit and listen to it all,
Am like an absent lover who would hear
News of one loved, incalculably dear.
ATTENDANTS
The mild-eyed Oxen and the gentle Ass,
By manger or in pastures that they graze,
Lift their slow heads to watch us where we pass,
A reminiscent wonder in their gaze.
Their low humility is like a crown,
A grave distinction they have come to wear,—
Their look gone past us—to a little Town,
And a white miracle that happened there.
An old, old vision haunts those quiet eyes,
Where proud remembrance drifts to them again,
Of Something that has made them humbly wise,
—These burden-bearers for the race of men—
And lightens every load they lift or pull,
Something that chanced because the Inn was full.