The Wharf of Dreams
Strange wares are handled on the wharves of sleep:
Shadows of shadows pass, and many a light
Flashes a signal fire across the night;
Barges depart whose voiceless steersmen keep
Their way without a star upon the deep;
And from lost ships, homing with ghostly crews,
Come cries of incommunicable news,
While cargoes pile the piers, a moon-white heap—
Budgets of dream-dust, merchandise of song,
Wreckage of hope and packs of ancient wrong,
Nepenthes gathered from a secret strand,
Fardels of heartache, burdens of old sins,
Luggage sent down from dim ancestral inns,
And bales of fantasy from No-Man’s Land.
To Louise Michel
I cannot take your road, Louise Michel,
Priestess of Pity and of Vengeance—no:
Down that amorphous gulf I cannot go—
That gulf of Anarchy whose pit is Hell.
Yet, sister, though my first word is farewell,
Remember that I know your hidden woe;
Have felt the grief that rends you blow on blow;
Have knelt beside you in the murky cell.
You never followed hate (let this atone)
Nor knew the wrongs of others from your own:
Wild was the road, but Love has always led,
So I am silent where I cannot praise;
And here now at the parting of the ways,
I lay a still hand lightly on your head.
Shepherd Boy and Nereid
Ah, once of old in some forgotten tongue,
Forgotten land, I was a shepherd boy,
And you a Nereid, a wingèd joy:
On through the dawn-bright peaks our bodies swung
And flower-soft lyrics by immortals sung
Fell from their unseen pinnacles in air:
God looked from Heaven that hour, for you were fair,
And I a poet, and the star was young.
You’d heard my woodland pipe and left the sea—
Your hair blown gold and all your body white—
Had left the ocean-girls to follow me.
We joined the hill-nymphs in their joyous flight,
And you laughed lightly to the sea, and sent
Quick glances flashing through me as I went.