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From the Lips of the Sea
by: Clinton Scollard
Description:
Excerpt
SEA MARVELS
This morning more mysterious seems the sea
Than yesterday when, with reverberant roar,
It charged upon the beaches, and the sky
Above it shimmered cloudless. Now the waves
Lap languorously along the foamless sand,
And till the far horizon swims in mist.
Out of this murk, across this oily sweep,
Might lost armadas grandly sail to shore;
Jason might oar on Argo, or the stern
Surge-wanderer from Ithaca's bleak isle
Break on the sight, or Viking prows appear,
And still not waken wonder. Aye, the sound
Of siren singing might drift o'er the main,
And yet not fall upon amazèd ears!
The soul is ripe for marvels. O great deep,
Give up your host of stately presences,
Adventurers and sea-heroes of old time,
And let them pass before us down the day
In proud procession, so that we who hear
Dull bells mark off the uneventful hours
May glimpse the bygone bravery of the world
Now moiling in its multitudinous marts,
Forgetful of fair faith and high resolve
In the inglorious grapple after gold!
The mist crept in from the sea
Out of the void and the vast;
And it bore the silver rain
A shimmering guest in its train,
And many a murmuring strain
Of the ships that sailed in the past;
Soft as sleep's footfalls be
The mist crept in from the sea.
The mist crept in from the sea
And folded the length of the shore
In the clasp of its mothering arms
As though it would shield from harms;
And lulled were the loud alarms,
And lost was the rage and roar
Of the surge, so soothingly
The mist crept in from the sea.
The mist crept in from the sea,
White, impalpable, strange;
Pull of the wafture of wings,
Of eerie and eldritch things,
Of visions and vanishings
Ever in shift and change;
Silently, hauntingly,
The mist crept in from the sea.
The mist crept in from the sea,
And bode for a space, and then
It heard the imperious call
Of the deep, transcending all,
And it knew itself as the thrall
Of the world-old master of men,
So, still as the dreams that flee,
The mist crept back to the sea.
DIRGE FOR A SAILOR
Beyond the bourns of time and sleep,
Beyond the sway of tides,
A voyager o'er death's darksome deep,
His ship at anchor rides.
He who from boyhood never knew
A garden save the foam,
Whose only rooftree was the blue,
At last has found a home.
And what more fit than that the wave
He loved through life to stem
Should sing above his green sea grave
This sailor's requiem!
Above the shouting of the gale,
The whipping sheet, the dashing spray,
I heard, with notes of joy and wail,
A piper play.
Along the dipping deck he trod,
The dusk about his shadowy form;
He seemed like some strange ancient god
Of song and storm....