There the bird of happy wings
Wafts the ocean-news I crave;
Rumours of an isle he brings
Gemlike on the golden wave:
But the baleful beak and plume
Scatter immelodious gloom.
Though the flow'rs be faultless made,
Perfectly to live and die—
Though the bright clouds bloom and fade
Flow'rlike 'midst a meadowy sky—
Where this raven roams forlorn
Veins of midnight flaw the morn.
He not less will croak and croak
As he ever caws and caws,
Till the starry dance he broke,
Till the sphery pæan pause,
And the universal chime
Falter out of tune and time.
Coils the labyrinthine sea
Duteous to the lunar will,
But some discord stealthily
Vexes the world-ditty still,
And the bird that caws and caws
Clasps creation with his claws.
LUX PERDITA
Thine were the weak, slight hands
That might have taken this strong soul, and bent
Its stubborn substance to thy soft intent,
And bound it unresisting, with such bands
As not the arm of envious heaven had rent.
Thine were the calming eyes
That round my pinnace could have stilled the sea,
And drawn thy voyager home, and bid him be
Pure with their pureness, with their wisdom wise,
Merged in their light, and greatly lost in thee.
But thou—thou passed'st on,
With whiteness clothed of dedicated days,
Cold, like a star; and me in alien ways
Thou leftest following life's chance lure, where shone
The wandering gleam that beckons and betrays.
ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES
She stands, a thousand-wintered tree,
By countless morns impearled;
Her broad roots coil beneath the sea,
Her branches sweep the world;
Her seeds, by careless winds conveyed,
Clothe the remotest strand
With forests from her scatterings made,
New nations fostered in her shade,
And linking land with land.