Chapter II

But neither trumpet-blast, nor the hoarse din
Of guns, nor the drooped signals from those mute
Banners, could find a language to salute
The frozen bodies that the ships brought in.
To-day the vaunt is with the grave. Sorrow
Has raked up faith and burned it like a pile
Of driftwood, scattering the ashes while
Cathedral voices anthemed God's To-morrow.

Out from the belfries of the town there swung
Great notes that held the winds and the pagan roll
Of open seas within their measured toll.
Only the bells' slow ocean tones, that rose
And hushed upon the air, knew how to tongue
That Iliad of Death upon the floes.

The Ground-Swell

Three times we heard it calling with a low,
Insistent note; at ebb-tide on the noon;
And at the hour of dusk, when the red moon
Was rising and the tide was on the flow;
Then, at the hour of midnight once again,
Though we had entered in and shut the door
And drawn the blinds, it crept up from the shore
And smote upon a bedroom window-pane;
Then passed away as some dull pang that grew
Out of the void before Eternity
Had fashioned out an edge for human grief;
Before the winds of God had learned to strew
His harvest-sweepings on a winter sea
To feed the primal hungers of a reef.

Magnolia Blossoms

I

The year's processionals mocked her as they streamed
Across the earth with proud, unsullied grace;
Each flower in its appointed time and place,
And the unfolding of each leaf had seemed
To brand the hope on which her heart had dreamed--
That spring should drive the winter from her face,
And summer with a broken covenant trace
How spring's indentured pledges were redeemed.

Slowly they came, those blown maturities,
In chaste, irenic order, leaf and bud
And blossom, and red fruit upon the trees,
Pale blue and yellow in spring flowers, blood
Of peony and rose--she knew them all--
From the crocus to the aster in the fall.

II

But when the autumn frost had stripped each tree,
And every garden of the earth lay bare
Of leaf and flower and fruit, she turned to where
The sun's immaculate hand was on the sea.
He touched the waves and from them magically
Lilies and violets grew, and jonquils fair
As those of spring--all in November air,
In fine reversal of earth's irony.