'Yes! I shall go and you will dream,
And drink the pale blue sky,
Beneath the hill that hugs you round
As silver days go by.
'When others come your love to claim,
You still, you pale blue sea,
Oh, shall you mean for them the same,
That once you meant for me?
'And shall they look on you with eyes
As tender true as mine,
And love each changing gleam that flies
Across that face of thine?'
I dislike the translation of expression from one art to another, otherwise I would call these verses impressionist. They have the quickly-captured forms, the frail fugitive colour, the infinite suggestiveness, which are the notes of the highest impressionism in painting.
See these eight lines:—
'The sun is at rest—for the storms are o'er;
Just touch'd with the hand of night,
And a line of shadow creeps to the shore,
Then flashes in silver light—
'Like a note that stops in its flight and droops,
And clings for a while to the ground;
Then trembles and wakes from its trance and breaks
Into passion and glory of sound.'
How entirely true are these to the breaking of a smooth, pale expanse of water into motion and light; the sudden flashing as of a million spears with which the sea, when smitten by the sword of the Sun, rises to the challenge of Morning. And yet by what simple and common words this strong effect is produced!
Or this:—
'Only a bit of land-locked bay,
With a haunting face on the further side;
Yet the ocean as well might bar the way,
So far from each other our lives divide.