From the Lips of the Sea

Excerpt

  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.

  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....