Over the sea hung birds more white than the skin
Of the last few swimmers who took the waves with their breasts;
The birds dipped straight as her ball when a silver fin
Glanced in the shallow crests.
She ran so swift, and suddenly stopped as swift
To look at a shell, or splash up a pool in rain;
Wind blew, and she in the wind began to drift
Foam-like, and suddenly ran again.
Children who played on the shore in the last of the day
Paused and watched in wonder her rise and fall
Like elders watching a child: she was younger than they
As she ran by the sea with her ball.
Her hair was loose and she had no shoes on her feet,
And her image ran under her feet on the wet gold shore,
She threw up her ball and she caught it, and once laughed sweet
As though the world had never heard laughter before.
THE STORY-TELLER.
VER the hearth on which we burned
Brown beech-nuts, lichen-twigs, and cones,
I sat beside her while she turned
A forkèd wand within the pyre,
Until two little spirts of fire
Sprang from the hazel’s withered bones.
Then, with her eyes upon her branch
Pointed with ruddy nuts of flame,
Like one who has no power to staunch
The heart’s-blood flowing from his side,
She through her mouth undammed a tide
Of legends that I could not name:—
Strange villages where damsels fished
For lovers in a rainbow sea
By night: a crazy man who wished
To act like God, and very soon
Out-freaked the fools that raked the moon:
Gold underneath an apple-tree