Ioläus / The man that was a ghost

by James Allan Mackereth

Ah meekness mute with tragedy!...
My body stirred as in a grave,
And looked forth wonderingly ...
The everlasting sea serene
'Neath everlasting sky
Shone, and across the morning sheen
The deathless winds went by.
And a face was there that I never had seen;
And a shadow stood where a glory had been;
The beauty hung at my heart like pain;
And love was lovely, but life was bane,
For all should die,—but the wonder remain,
And the earth, and the sea, and the sky ...

The hills have winds, the fields have flowers;
Not all alone is the wintry tree;
The stars that gleam in cloudy bowers
Have stars for company;
The waste hath peace of the drifting hours;
And night brings joy to the hoary sea:

But the heart of man is a lonely thing;
And lone the soul of the secret vows,
With its wasted love and its wounded wing,
In a withered world that hath no spring,
No burgeoning boughs:
The soul of man is the loneliest thing
In life's eternal wandering
That God allows ...

O, isle of dreams, and orient shore!
Ah miracle in sea and sky!
Ah youth that fleeting love made soar
To heaven! The glory upon high
To dusk hath waned, yet comes once more
A wonder and a cry!...

The ship's bell tolled off that fair land;
The sails bulged buoyantly:
The sun rose mute, and large, and bland;
The favouring wind swung free.
We stood from that enchanted strand
Into the morning sea.

We rode down swinging winds away,
Far o'er the moving waters wan,
Seen low at pale meridan,
The land was grey.

The dusk came down; and like a ghost
Rose the sad moon; the waves 'gan moan:
There on the deep no kindly coast,—
The dark alone.

And in two faces stared, and stared
The being without blood or breath,
The stilly spectre, horror-haired,
That haunteth all he murdereth;
At noon, at midnight stared, and stared
When sunrise flashed, when sunset flared,
The grizzly phantom horror-haired:—

Stalking frail beauty to her grave
I saw him moving evermore
A stealthy wanderer on the wave,
A shrouded shadow on the shore,
The worm his bondsman, and the brave
His victims evermore ...

The Power that drives all mortal things,
Upbuoys all being's wanderings,
Moved in the void his urgent wings ...