CARDIGAN BAY
Clean, green, windy billows notching out the sky,
Grey clouds tattered into rags, sea-winds blowing high,
And the ships under topsails, beating, thrashing by,
And the mewing of the herring gulls.
Dancing, flashing green seas shaking white locks,
Boiling in blind eddies over hidden rocks,
And the wind in the rigging, the creaking of the blocks,
And the straining of the timber hulls.
Delicate, cool sea-weeds, green and amber-brown,
In beds where shaken sunlight slowly filters down
On many a drowned seventy-four, many a sunken town,
And the whitening of the dead men’s skulls.
CHRISTMAS EVE AT SEA
A wind is rustling ‘south and soft,’
Cooing a quiet country tune,
The calm sea sighs, and far aloft
The sails are ghostly in the moon.
Unquiet ripples lisp and purr,
A block there pipes and chirps i’ the sheave,
The wheel-ropes jar, the reef-points stir
Faintly—and it is Christmas Eve.
The hushed sea seems to hold her breath,
And o’er the giddy, swaying spars,
Silent and excellent as Death,
The dim blue skies are bright with stars.