Envoy.
Ah! child, so soon the colours fade
From Watteau fêtes and Teniers fairs,
You yet may seek in notes decayed
Our long-forgot familiar airs.
Mortimer Wheeler.
BALLADE OF SEA-MUSIC.
Sink, sun, in crimson far away,
Float out, pale moon, above the roar,
While brown and silver, flame and grey,
Round rock and sand, the waters pour;
For night hath clue to all the store,
Of wild wave-harmony that rings,
And earth hath not in all her lore,
The legends that sea-music brings.
Here singing silver shallows fray
The ruby-tufted golden floor,
Here wondrous twilight forests sway
Round coral porch and corridor
Where lurk——but ah; why yet implore
The splendid dream that round them clings?...
Where lie the dead who heard of yore
The legends that sea-music brings.
This is the sea that could not stay,
The tides of men that evermore
Rolled westward still and cleft its spray,
With hollowed trunk, and dauntless oar.
Here Grecian trireme reeled before,
Rome's purple galley; here sea kings,
Left red on wave and blackened shore
The legends that sea-music brings.
Envoy.
Earth keeps not now the face she wore
The smoke-trails dusk the wide white wings;
No longer as of old shall soar,
The legends that sea-music brings.