“No one guessed how they knew,
Nor what the wind said,
And the sailors are gone
And the merchants are dead;
But the toppling summer sea,
And the pale blue winter world,
Came often and oft again,
And the years like sails furled.
Men died on the ships
And were buried at sea,
Men languished on wild coasts,
Lost in mystery....”
“No one knows what was said
Nor what answered again,
When the wind blew a strange way,
The wind blew a new way,
For Nantucket men,
And the Old World called to New England!”
NOT THE GIFT BUT THE GIVER.
Suppose that o’er the blue thin circling line
Where low clouds sleep, some figure-head should shine;
White swelling sails spread out on fan-streaked skies,
And a new vessel in the west should rise.
Suppose this vessel, from untraveled zones,
Through savage suns and fierce Eurocyldons
Should bring me deeply buried in its hold
A mystic gift of jewels and blazing gold.
And, having safely brought the precious thing,
Should spread its sail, augment each shining wing,
And calmly, like a night-bird through the stars,
Speed on again, crossing the distant bars;
Then through the mists go out before my eyes,
Leaving me standing there beside the prize.
I, left on lonely shores, would ever mourn
The messenger that sailed beyond the bourne;
I, left on lonely shores, would only pray
To see again the ship that sailed away.
I, searching the horizon’s purple round,
Would follow ships, hither and thither bound,
Longing for this—to see the dim prow lift,
That brought to me my longing with my gift.
And so with thee, who broughtest me thy truth
Ablaze with jewels, alight with mystic signs,
Then vanished. Lo! with what utter ruth,
The sorrow of my gift my soul divines.
Holding with yearning talismans of thee,
Who hath passed on beyond the touch of me.
THE BALL.
How do we see our world—
Formless? Vague?
A rude sphere hurled through space?
A green kaleidoscope of trees,
And the flash of seas?
And life and movement in every place?
I see my world with color wet;
With the golden sap
Pushing the green to the ardent sky.
I see the ripeness, the warmth of fruits,
Round to the sun, plumed melody,
The clasp and the subtleties of roots;
I see gods walk on the morning hills,
Up the dappled brooks and the secret lanes
And vistas leading to ferny haunts,
Where the vivid crimson cardinal flaunts
In calm of tree-pillared fanes.
I see my world star-fretted, caught
In the web of enchained eternities—
With the age-old moon on her stair, cloud wrought,
Climbing the night-sky’s precipice;
I see the silver wheel of tides,
The night spell hid in the forest breast,
The gold splashed dawn that gravely glides
Over grey mountain crest.
O World, whirling out with the sun,
And holding us, everyone,
When the golden skies twilighted lean
To the purple hills—What have they seen,
Who were born, still blind, in a web of days,
To thy lessons written in simple ways?
Dull streets choked with dusty forms?
Crowds and houses and groups and swarms
Who strive, and lose, and are gone again?
A world of sordid women and men?
A crowd of petty and dull and mean?
Not a flower face nor a splash of green—
Unless—O world, they have seen it all—
The miracle of thy Wonder-Ball!