And foggy days, when wrapped in trailing pause,
The trees, like ships, sail pearly seas bemused
With melting sails and ropes of rainy gauze
Making for harbor, tenuous, confused,
Anchored in subtle inlets, phantom cruised;
Where voyagers land unchallenged, unperused,
With silver myrrh to sanctify the homes,
And cloudy swirls to hallow forth the domes.
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These ships bring stores by which my heart is fed,
The voyagers of this filmy vapor flight
Lay balm on gashes where the soul has bled,
Wrapping its wounds in meshes of soft light.
And I am soothed of grief, who take a white
Communion under calm of dripping trees,
Walking uncandled avenues of rainy night
With veiléd forms to nebulous mysteries.
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Charmed thing to drift along the narrow lanes
Where some dear door flies open to the rap,
To sit behind windows of whaling days;
A lantern in the hall, a chair mayhap
Some geniused Folger used, to read a log
Stamped with inked whales, kept blue from boyhood cruise;
The Swift that wound the yarn, peat from the bog—
The horn the Town Crier used to cry the news.
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Charmed thing to catch a sea-word full of spice,
To eat of beach plum jelly by the fire,
To see rag rugs hooked like a sailor’s splice,
To watch the peats’ blue flicker on the fire;
To see the rafters carved in sailor-ways,
Paintings of canvased ships crossing the bars,
When daring whalers went uncharted ways,
And laid their course by youth’s adventurous stars.
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Along the street in early morning’s glow,
Down to their boats the Portuguese fishers go;
And through the cobbled alleys bootéd feet
Drown the gruff voice as sailors comrades meet.
Then shawled forms slip down to the baker’s shop,
The Spanish bell rings in the tower top,
The placid tradesmen wait the lifted latch,
And quahog diggers launch for the clamming patch.
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