The glad seas and the mad seas, the seas on a night in June,
And never a hand to beckon back from the path of the new-lit moon;
Never a night that lasts too long or a dawn that breaks too soon!
The shrill breeze and the hill breeze, the sea breeze, fierce and bold,
And never a breeze that gives the lie to a tale that a breeze has told;
Always the tale of the strange and new in the countries strange and old.
The lone trail and the known trail, the trail you must take on trust,
And never a trail without a grave where a wanderer’s bones are thrust—
Never a look or a turning back till the dust shall claim the dust!
Gold
WHEN life wakened in the Spring
All the world was gold and green!
Sunlight lay on everything,
Sailing cloud and soaring wing,
Emerald banks where snow had been,
Drifts of daffodils between.
When Life’s pulse beat strong and high
Shone the world in gold and blue!
Canopied with turquoise sky
Summer passed superbly by,
Bluest midnight cupped the dew
Golden morn might sparkle through!
Now that life would rest again
Soft she lies in gold and brown,
Brown the fields and gold the grain,
Brown the little pools of rain,
Gold the leaves that falter down
To brown pavements in the town.
The Materialist
MY soul has left its tent of clay
And seeks from star to star,
’Mid flaming worlds that are to be,
And fruitful worlds that are,
The Voice which spake and said “Live on!”
(When Death said, “You may die”)
And sent my spirit wandering
The stairway of the sky.
Still must I seek what on the earth
I sought as fruitlessly—
The world I knew, the heaven I scorned
Lost in infinity:
Alone, and on the ageless breath
Of cosmic whirlwinds spun,
I hurtle through the outer dark
Toward some fantastic sun!—