Chapter II

Behind me lie the Everglades,
Where the bittern wails to the moon's face.
Peace is gone as I wake
And memory in me wails
From the primal swamp, Heredity,
Whence I have come with all the desires
Of creeping, walking, flying things,
To creep or walk or fly.

With all the desires of the earth-creatures;
Yet with a want transcendent,
A want that comes with the glimmer of stars
And pierces to my heart.
A want of the life I have not known,
Of the life unknowable,
In the Everglades of the Universe
Where the Great Spirit glides.

A FLORIDA BOATING SONG

Down thro Florida keys,
From island, to island!
Down thro Florida keys,
Where mangrove roots dip in the seas!
A myriad tangled roots
From each palmetto byland,
Oyster-encrusted roots mid which
The heron wades in the shallow shades!

Down thro Florida keys,
Around them, between them,
Thro low green Florida keys,
So low they scarce seem born of the seas!
Where pouchy pelicans roost
On cypresses that lean them
Out over the idle lap of the tide
That comes and goes with balmy flows!

Down thro Florida keys,
Thro mazes on mazes
Of ripple-encircled keys,
Where sun and wind play as they please!
Where the eaglet, high in air,
Or the wild white ibis, dazes
Eyes that follow them up the blue,
As the heart would do, the heart too!

Down thro Florida keys
I'm going, I'm going!
Thro low green Florida keys
And greener glades of Florida seas!
And this is all I know,
That all in the world worth knowing
Is joy like that of the tarpon's leap
In air divine with the warm sunshine!

DAWN-BLISS

(_Naples-on-the-Gulf_)

I went out at dawn,
Pelicans were fishing,
Big-beaked, grey and brown;
Little waves were swishing.
Clouds creamed the sky,
As shells creamed the shore;
Wild aery hues of beauty
Round seemed to pour!

I went out at dawn,
Pelicans were floating,
Big beaks on their breasts;
Up the sun came boating.
"Ship ahoy!" I cried,
To his golden sail.
Bliss-winds of beauty in me
Broke--to a gale!

I went out at dawn,
Pelicans were winging.
Palms waved passion plumes,
Beach sands were singing.
Stripped, save of strength,
I plunged into the sea
And swam, till the bliss of beauty
Died away in me.

ATAVISM

I leant out over a ledging cliff and looked down into the sea,
Where weed and kelp and dulse swayed, in green translucency;
Where the abalone clung to the rock and the star-fish lay about,
Purpling the sands that slid away under the silver trout.

And the sea-urchin too was there, and the sea-anemone.
It was a world of watery shapes and hues and wizardry.
And I felt old stirrings wake in me, under the tides of time,
Sea-hauntings I had brought with me out of the ancient slime.

And now, as I muse, I cannot rid my senses of the spell
That in a tidal trance all things around me drift and swell
Under the sea of the Universe, down into which strange eyes
Keep peering at me, as I peered, with wonder and surmise.

RE-RECKONING

Two years have gone, and again I stand
On the bow of a mighty ship
That pushes her way 'twixt sea and stars
With soft and dreamy dip.
Two years of labouring, heart and hand,
Of waging spirit-wars,
Of wondering ever what life is--
And if death heals its scars.

Two years; and again the mast-bell sounds
Above me--with a low voice,
As ghostly as the white phosphor-foam
That breaks with the old noise
Of waters that have washed all bounds
Of earth, that is man's home--
His ark--on the wide ether flung,
Unrestingly to roam.

For, even as we, is this our earth
An endless wanderer
Far down a universe with vast
Strange voyagings astir;
And where time ever brings to birth
A craving, never past,
To fare from where we are, to where
No anchor ever was cast.

A craving--in the mote, the man,
The mollusc and the star;
A yearning on--O life! O life!
How far leads it, how far?
All unbelievably began
Our voyage, mid a strange strife--
That, meaningless, yet seems to mean
It is with Wisdom rife.

But if it is not, shall we say,
"Let man scuttle his ship,
And drown in universal death
The griefs that at him grip?"
No; for no surety rests therein
To certain end of breath.
He can but let hope set the course
His soul foretokeneth.

TO THE AFTERNOON MOON, AT SEA

Take care, O wisp of a moon,
Vague on the sunny blue above the sea,
Or the gull flying across you
Will pierce your veil-thin shape with a sharp wing!

Take care, or the wind will wilt you,
As he does the clouds snowily drifting by you,
And diffuse you over the sky, a silvery mist,
To give more cool to the day!

Take care, so near the horizon,
Or a phantom skipper, one who has long been drowned,
Will reach above it and seize you
And make you his sail to circle the world forever!

Take care, take care! for frailty
Is the prey of the strong, and you, a wraith of it,
Have yet a long while to go before nightfall
Brings you to sure effulgence!

PATHS

Crushing in my hand
The bay as I pass,
Drinking in its fragrance
With the sea's scent,
While gull-wings write
Poems white and fast
On the blue sky
That is soft with content;
Crushing in my hand
The bay and the juniper,
While I record
Each line the gulls write,
I go by sea paths
Down to the sea's edge,
I go by heart paths
Deep into delight.

Simple is my joy
As the little sandpiper's,
Who follows beside me
With silvery song;
Blither than the breeze,
That skims great billows
Nor knows how deep
Is their flow--or strong.
Simple is my joy,
A sunny sense-sweetness,
Full of bird-bliss,
Bay-warmth, spray-leap.
Mysteries there are
And miseries beneath it,
But sunk, like wrecks,
Far down in the deep.

FROM A NORTHERN BEACH

Is it because for a million years
The tide has entered here
From cold north seas
Where ice-floes freeze
That ever unto my ear
Primordial loneness in its voice
Comes telling of that time
When life was not, upon the earth,
But only glacier-rime?

Is it because these granite rocks
I share with weed and scurf
Were held so long
By the ice-throng
That now they take the surf
So selflessly and soullessly,
As if God's Immanence
Had been pressed from them, never more
To enter, with sweet sense?

And is it because I, too, evolved
From ice and sea and shore,
Can understand
How life has spanned
The lifeless ages o'er,
That as I sit here, suddenly
The tide again seems stilled
And earth beneath a great white pall
Again lies changed and chilled?

So it must be--ah, so; for soft
Within my muted brain
The heritage
Of age on age
Reverberates again.
Wherefore when glacial Silence comes
With Death shall I emerge
From that as from the frozen Past,
Under Life's endless urge?

PASSAGE

A dark sail,
Like a wild-goose wing,
Where the sunset was.
The moon soon will silver its sinewy flight
Thro the night watches,
And the far flight
Of those immortal migrants,
The ever-returning stars.

ALEEN

The long line of the foaming coast
Is muffled by the fog's gray ghost.
I cross the league of sea between
And lift the latch and kiss Aleen.

She throws a log upon the fire.
I draw her to me, nigh and nigher.
She does not know what a brief time
Ago it was my arms held--crime.

The surf is beating on the shore.
We hear our own heart-beatings more.
She speaks of _him_ and my reply
Is silence: does she wonder why?

"I do not love him: have no fear,"
Her whisper is, against my ear.
At last, "I have no fear," say I.
She starts, as at a wild-beast's cry.

And then she sees red on my coat.
A still-born cry throbs in her throat.
The fog sweeps by the window pane.
Her sight is fixed on one dull stain.

I rise and light my pipe and go,
Leaving her standing, staring so.
The wind means storm, I think, to-night:
But more than that will make her white.

And yet had it been yesterday
She said those words, I still could pray.
There would be still a God above--
For two, now overwhelmed, to love!

TO A SOLITARY SEA-GULL

Lone white gull with sickle wings,
You reap for the heart inscrutable things:
Sorrow of mists and surf of the shore,
Winds that sigh of the nevermore;
Fret of foam and flurry of rain,
Swept far over the troubled tide;
Maths of mystery and grey pain
The sea's voice ever yields, beside.
Lone white gull, you reap for the heart
Life's most sad and inscrutable part.

INEFFABLE THINGS

The little song-sparrow is gone
And the summer is nearly ended,
The rill of his song was a happy rift
In the surging sound of the sea.
The swallow is lingering on,
And the silvery swift sandpiper,
And I--tho I know my saddened heart
Has lost an ineffable thing,
That summer no more can bring.

With the first bay-leaves that flung
Their scent to me by the billows,
I twined some faith, some trust,
As glad as the sparrow's song.
And the terns that darted among
The tides seemed weaving for me
Impalpable wings of peace and hope--
That now have taken flight
Beyond the day and the night.

Ah, Life, you have known my plea
For sun and the tide of fortune,
For winds to waken my sail and bear
Me joyously over the world.
Know too how much of your fog
And storm and rain I will suffer,
If only you do not sweep from me
The dear ineffable things,
To which your fragrance clings.

THE SONG OF A SEA-FARER

Many are on the sea to-day
With all sails set.
The tide rolls in a restive gray,
The wind blows wet.
The gull is weary of his wings,
And I am weary of all things.

Heavy upon me longing lies,
My sad eyes gaze
Across sad leagues that sink and rise
And sink always.
My life has sunk and risen so,
I'd have it cease awhile to flow.

WAVES

The evening sails come home
With twilight in their wings.
The harbour-light across the gloam
Springs;
The wind sings.

The waves begin to tell
The sea's night-sorrow o'er,
Weaving within their ancient spell
More
Than earth's lore.

The rising moon wafts strange
Low lures across the tide,
On which my dim thoughts seem to range,
Stride
Upon stride,

Until, with flooding thrill,
They seem at last to blend
With waves that from the Eternal Will
Wend,
Without end.

IN A STORM

(_To a Petrel_)

All day long in the spindrift swinging,
Bird of the sea! bird of the sea!
How I would that I had thy winging--
How I envy thee!

How I would that I had thy spirit,
So to careen, joyous to cry,
Over the storm and never fear it!
Into the night that hovers near it!
Calm on a reeling sky!

All day long, and the night, unresting!
Ah! I believe thy every breath
Means that life's best comes ever breasting
Peril and pain and death!

AFTER THEIR PARTING

(_A Woman Speaks_)

You know that rock on a rocky coast,
Where the moon came up, a ruined ghost,
Distorted until her shape almost
Seemed breaking?
Came up like a phantom silently
And dropped her shroud on the red night sea,
Then walked, a spectral mystery,
Unwaking?

You know how, sudden, there came a change,
When she had left the sea's low range,
Its lurid crimson, stark and strange,
Behind her?
How, sudden, her silver self shone thro,
Tranquilly free of the earth's stained hue,
And found a way where the clouds were few
To bind her?

You know this? Then go back some day,
When I have gone the moonless way,
To that dark rock whereon we lay
And waited;
And when the moon has arisen free,
Your soiling doubt shall fall from me,
And eased of unrest your heart shall be,
And sated.

A WORD'S MAGIC

Do you remember Etajima,
And how, upon a moon-fogged sea,
As ghostly as ever a tide shall be,
We passed an island silently?

And how a low voice in the gloom
Of the temple pine-trees leaning there
Said _sayonara_ to one somewhere
Unseen in the shadow-haunted air?

Just _sayonara_: but it seemed
The soul of all farewells that night,
The sigh of all withdrawn delight,
The sound of love's last rapture-rite.

And now, after long years, it comes
Again from isles of memory
To bring once more to birth in me
The breath of all lost witchery.

Yes, one low word of parting, now
Echoing, thro the fog of years,
Has touched my heart with beauty's tears,
And youth thro all things reappears.

SEA RHAPSODY

(_Out of Hong-kong_)

Never again, never again
Did I hope to breathe such joy!
The sea is blue and the winds halloo
Up to the sun "Ahoy!"
"Ahoy!" they shout and the mists they rout
From the mountain-tops go streaming
In happy play where the gulls sway,
And a million waves are gleaming!

And every wave, billowing brave,
Is tipped with a wild delight.
A garden of isles around me smiles,
Bathed in the blue noon light,
The rude brown bunk of the fishing junk
Seems fair as a sea-king's palace:
O wine of the sky the gods have spilt
Out of its crystal chalice!

For wine is the wind, wine the sea,
Wine for the sinking spirit,
To lift it up from the cling of clay
Into high Bliss--or near it!
So let me drink till I cease to think,
And know with a sting of rapture
That joy is yet as wide as the world
For men, at last, to capture!

IN AN ORIENTAL HARBOUR

All the ships of the world come here,
Rest a little, then set to sea;
Some ride up to the waiting pier,
Some drop anchor beyond the quay.
Some have funnels of blue and black,
(Some come once but come not back!)
Some have funnels of red and yellow,
Some--O war!--have funnels of gray.

All the ships of the world come here,
Ships from every billow's foam;
Fruiter and oiler, pirateer,
Liner and lugger and tramp a-roam.
Some are scented of palm and pine,
(Some are fain for the Pole's far clime).
Some are scented of soy and senna,
Some--ah me!--are scented of home.

All the ships of the world come here,
Day and night there is sound of bells,
Seeking the port they calmly steer,
Clearing the port they ring farewells.
Under the sun or under the stars
(Under the light of swaying spars),
Under the moon or under morning
Do they swing, as the tide swells.

All the ships of the world come here,
Rest a little and then are gone,
Over the crystal planet-sphere
Swept, thro every season, on.
Swept to every cape and isle
(Every coast of cloud or smile),
Swept till over them sweeps the sorrow
Of their last sea-dawn.

UNDER THE SKY

Far out to sea go the fishing junks,
With all sails set,
The tide swings gray and the clouds sway,
The wind blows wet;
Blows wet from the long coast lying dim
As if mist-born.
Far out they sail, as the stars pale,
The stars of morn.

Far out to sea go the fishing junks,
And I who pass
Upon a deck that is vaster reck
No more, alas,
Of all their life, or they of mine,
Than comes to this,--
That under the sky we live and die,
Like all that is.

A SONG FOR HEALING

(_On the South Seas_)

When I return to the world again,
The world of fret and fight,
To grapple with godless things and men,
In battle, wrong or right,
I will remember this--the sea,
And the white stars hanging high,
And the vessel's bow
Where calmly now
I gaze to the boundless sky.

When I am deaf with the din of strife,
And blind amid despair,
When I am choked with the dust of life
And long for free soul-air,
I will recall this sound--the sea's,
And the wide horizon's hope,
And the wind that blows
And the phosphor snows
That fall as the cleft waves ope.

When I am beaten--when I fall
On the bed of black defeat,
When I have hungered, and in gall
Have got but shame to eat,
I will remember this--the sea,
And its tide as soft as sleep,
And the clear night sky
That heals for aye
All who will trust its Deep.

A SINGHALESE LOVE LAMENT

As the cocoanut-palm
That pines, my love,
Away from the sound
Of the planter's voice,
Am I, for I hear
No more resound
Your song by the pearl-strewn sea!
The sun may come
And the moon wax round,
And in its beam
My mates may rejoice,
But I feast not
And my heart is dumb,
As I long, O long, for thee!

In the jungle-deeps,
Where the cobra creeps,
The leopard lies
In wait for me,
But O, my love,
When the daylight dies
There is more to my dread than he!
Harsh lonely tears
That assail my eyes
Are worse to bear,--
For the misery
That makes them well
Is the long, long years
That I moan away from thee!

O again, again,
In my katamaran
A-keel would I push
To your palmy door!
Again would I hear
The heave and hush
Of your song by the plantain-tree.
But far away
Do I toil and crush
The hopes that arise
At my sick heart's core.
For never near
Does it come, the day
That draws me again to thee!

THE CITY

Soft and fair by the Desert's edge,
And on the dim blue edge of the sea,
Where white gulls wing all day and fledge
Their young on the high cliff's sandy ledge,
There is a city I have beheld,
Sometime or where, by day or dream,
I know not which, for it seems enspelled
As I am by its memory.

Pale minarets of the Prophet pierce
Above it into the white of the skies,
And sails enchanted a thousand years
Flit at its feet while fancy steers.
No face of all its faces to me
Is known--no passion of it or pain.
It is but a city by the sea,
Enshrined forever beyond my eyes!

FULL TIDE

Sea-scents, wild-rose scents,
Bay and barberry too,
Drench the wind, the Maine wind,
That gulls are dipping thro,
With soft hints, sweet hints,
With lull, lure and desire;
With memory-wafts and mysteries,
And all the ineffable histories
Made when the sea and land meet,
And the sun lends nuptial fire.

Sea-foam, and dream-foam,
And which is which, who knows,
When all day long the heart goes out
To every wave that blows,
That blossoms on the bright tide,
Then sheds a shimmering crest
And yields its tossing place to one
Whose blooming is as quickly done--
For beauty is ever swift--begot
Of rapture and unrest.

Sea-deeps, and soul-deeps,
And where shall faith be found
If not within the heart's beat
Or in the surging sound
Of the sea, which is the earth's heart,
Beating with tireless might;
Beating--tho but a tragedy
Life seems on every land and sea;
Beating to bring all breath, somehow,
Out of despair's blight.

THE HERDING

Quietly, quietly in from the fields
Of the grey Atlantic the billows come,
Like sheep to the fold.
Shorn by the rocks of fleecy foam,
They sink on the brown seaweed at home;
And a bell, like that of a bellwether,
Is scarcely heard from the buoy--
Save when they suddenly stumble together,
In herded hurrying joy,
Upon its guidance: then soft music
From it is tolled.

Far out in the murk that follows them in
Is heard the call of the fog-horn's voice,
Like a shepherd's--low.
And the strays as if waiting it seem to pause
And lift their heads and listen--because
It is sweet from wandering ways to be driven,
When we have fearless breasts,
When all that we strayed for has been given,
When no want molests
Us more--no need of the tide's ebbing
And tide's flow.

ON THE MAINE COAST

The rocks, lean fingers of the land,
Reach out into the sea
And cool themselves, all day long,
In the tide drippingly.
They catch the seaweed in them
And the starfish on their tips,
And gulls that light
And the swift flight
Of swallows skimming grey and white--
And spars of broken ships.

The moon, God's perfect silver,
With which He pays the world
For toil and quest and day's unrest,
Is washed on them and swirled.
And avidly they seize it,
Then let it slip away,
Only again
And yet again
To grasp at it--as eager men
At joy no hand can stay.

SEANCE

Hovering wings of terns
Over the rock-pools flutter,
For the tide, ebbed far out,
Seems to stumble and stutter;
Seems like a spirit lost,
Unable to come again
Back to the wonted ways and days
Of ever-wanting men.

And the moon, a medium
Trance-pale, is laying her light
Over its surge--till, lo,
It turns from the deep and night.
And the spirit-word it brings
Is the message of all time,
That doubt is only the ebb of faith,
Which ever reflows sublime!

A SIDMOUTH LAD

Salcombe Hill and four hills more
Lie to leftward of this shore.
On the right Peak Hill arises
Ever rises, sickening, o'er.

Two score rotting years I've seen
Sidmouth sit those hills between:
Only Sidmouth--and twice over
Must I bide it, as I've been.

Then a churchyard hole for me,
By the dull voice of the sea.
Rotting, still in Sidmouth rotting,
Rotting to eternity.

WIDOWED

One wild gull on a wilder storm,
Winging to keep her lone heart warm.
One wild gull by the surf--and I,
Beaten by wind and rain and sky.

One wild gull in the offing lost,
Wilder heart in my bosom tost.
One wild gull--O why but one!
Two, dear God, should there be--or none!

TO THE SEA

Are you enraged, O sea, with the blue peace
Of heaven, so to uplift your armied waves,
Your billowy rebellion against its ease,
And with Tartarean mutter from cold caves,
From shuddering profundities where shapes
Of awe glide thro entangled leagues of ooze,
To hoot your watery omens evermore,
And evermore your moanings interfuse
With seething necromancy and mad lore?

Or do you labour with the drifting bones
Of countless dead, O mighty Alchemist,
Within whose stormy crucible the stones
Of sunk primordial shores, granite and schist,
Are crumbled by your all-abrasive beat?
With immemorial chanting to the moon,
And cosmic incantation, do you crave
Rest to be found not till your wilds are strewn
Frigid and desert over earth's last grave?

You seem drunk with immensity, mad, blind--
With raving deaf, with wandering forlorn,
Parent of Demogorgon whose dire mind
Is night and earthquake, shapeless shame and scorn
Of the o'ermounting birth of Harmony.
Bound in your briny bed and gnawing earth
With foamy writhing and fierce-panted tides,
You are as Fate in torment of a dearth
Of black disaster and destruction's strides.

And how you shatter silence from the world,
Incarnate Motion of all mystery!
Whose waves are fury-wings, whose winds are hurled
Whither your Ghost tempestuous can see
A desolate apocalypse of death.
Yea, how you shatter silence from the world,
With emerald overflowing, waste on waste
Of flashing susurration, dashed and swirled
On isles and continents that shrink abased!

And yet, O veering veil of the Unknown,
Gathered from primal mist and firmament;
O surging shape of Life's unfathomed moan,
Whelming humanity with fears unmeant;
Yet do I love you, far above all fear,
And loving you unconquerably trust
The runes that from your ageless surfing start
Would read, were they revealed, gust upon gust,
That Immortality is might of heart!

SEA-MAD

(_A Breton Maid_)

Three waves of the sea came up on the wind to me!
One said:
"Away! he is dead!
Upon my foam I have flung his head!
Go back to your cote, you never shall wed!--
(Nor he!)"

Three waves of the sea came up on the wind to me.
Two brake.
The third with a quake
Cried loud, "O maid, I'll find for thy sake
His dead lost body: prepare his wake!"
(And back it plunged to the sea!)

Three waves of the sea came up on the wind to me.
One bore--
And swept on the shore--
His pale, pale face I shall kiss no more!
Ah, woe to women death passes o'er!
(Woe's me!)

THE ATHEIST

Over a scurf of rocks the tide
Wanders inward far and wide,
Lifting the sea-weed's sloven hair,
Filling the pools and foaming there,
Sighing, sighing everywhere.

Merged are the marshes, merged the sands,
Save the dunes with pine-tree hands
Stretching upward toward the sky,
Where the sun, their god, moves high:
Would I too had a god--yea, I!

For, the sea is to me but sea,
And the sky but infinity.
Tides and times are but some chance
Born of a primal atom-dance.
All is a mesh of Circumstance.

In it there is no Heart--no Soul--
No illimitable Goal--
Only wild happenings, by wont
Made into laws no might can shunt
From the deep grooves in which they hunt.

Wings of the gull I watch or claws
Of the cold crab whose strangeness awes:
Faces of men that feel the force
Of a hid thing they call life's course:
It is their hoping or remorse.

Yet it may be that I have missed
Something that only they who tryst,
Not with the sequence of events
But with their viewless Immanence,
Find and acclaim with spirit-sense.

AT THE HELM

(_Nova Scotia_)

Fog, and a wind that blows the sea
Blindly into my eyes.
And I know not if my soul shall be
When the day dies.

But if it be not and I lose
All that men live to gain--
I who have known but heaving hues
Of wind and rain--

Still I shall envy no man's lot,
For I have held this great,
Never in whines to have forgot
That Fate is Fate.

IMPERTURBABLE

Three times the fog rolled in today, a silent shroud,
From which the breakers ran like ghosts, moaning and tumbling.
Three times a startled sea-bird cried aloud,
On the wind stumbling.

But I cast my net with never a fear, tho wraiths in me
And birds of wild unrest were stirring and starting and crying.
For I knew that under the sway of every sea
There is calm lying.

WASTE

I flung a wild rose into the sea,
I know not why.
For swinging there on a rathe rose-tree,
By the scented bay and barberry,
Its petals gave all their sweet to me,
As I passed by.

And yet I flung it into the tide,
And went my way.
I climbed the gray rocks, far and wide,
And many a cove of peace I tried,
With none of them all to be satisfied,
The whole long day.

For I had wasted a beautiful thing,
Which might have won
Each passing heart to pause and sing,
On the sea-path there, of its blossoming.
And who wastes beauty shall feel want's sting,
As I had done.

RESURGENCE

I was content, O Sea, to be free for a space from striving,
Content as the brown weed is, at rest on rocks in the sun,
When the salt tide is out, and the surf no more is riving
At its roots, or swirling and bidding it sway where the white waves run.

I was content--with life, and love, and a little over;
A little achieved of the much that is given to men to do.
But now with your tidal strife do you come again, vain rover,
And tell of vastitudes, to be sailed, or sounded, anew.

Now again do you surge. And the fathomless tides of thinking,
Of wanting, waiting, despairing--or daring--with you come;
The inner tides of the soul, that had ebbed with slumberous shrinking,
But now are bursting again, thro the caves of it long numb.

So vainly I lie on the cliff with the blissful Blue above me
And listless sated gulls afloat below on the swells,
For I am soothless, sateless, because of desires that shove me
Out and away with the winds, on quests no distance quells!

LIFE'S ANSWER

A stroke of lightning stabbed the storm-black sea,
As if it sought the heart of Life thereunder,
And meant to put an end to it utterly;--
Then came thunder--
Wildly applauding thunder.

Riven with fear the foam-crests ran before it,
Hissed by the rain and beaten down to darkness.
A gull rose out of the murk with wings that tore it--
Life's answer to the storm's terrible starkness.

AS THE TIDE COMES IN

The quivering terns dart wild and dive,
As the tide comes tumbling in.
The calm rock-pools grow all alive,
With the tide tumbling in.
The crab who under the brown weed creeps,
And the snail who lies in his house and sleeps,
Awake and stir, as the plunging sweeps
Of the tide come tumbling in.

Gray driftwood swishes along the sand,
As the tide comes tumbling in.
With wreck and wrack from many a land,
On the tide, tumbling in.
About the beach are a broken spar,
A pale anemone's torn sea-star
And scattered scum of the waves' old war,
As the tide tumbles in.

And, oh, there is a stir at the heart of me,
As the tide comes tumbling in.
All life once more is a part of me,
As the tide tumbles in.
New hopes awaken beneath despair
And thoughts slip free of the sloth of care,
While beauty and love are everywhere--
As the tide comes tumbling in.

SENSE-SWEETNESS

Flowers are dancing, waves playing, pines swaying, gulls are a-swarm;
Sea and heather, sunning together, glad of the weather, with God are warm.

Flowers are dancing, clouds winging, larks singing, summer abrew--
Summer the old ecstatic passion of Life to fashion the world anew.

TIDALS

Low along the sea, low along the sea,
The gray gulls are flying, and one sail swings;
The tide is foaming in; the soft wind sighing;
The brown kelp is stretching, to the surf, harp-strings.

Low along the sea, low along the sea,
The gray gulls are flying, and one sail fades;
The tide is foaming out; the soft wind dying;
And white stars are peeping from the night's pale shades.

A SAILOR'S WIFE

Into port when the sun was setting
Rode the ship that bore my love,
Over the breakers wildly fretting,
Under the skies above.

Down to the beach I ran to meet him;
He would come as he had said:
And he came--in a sailor's coffin,
Dead! . . . . . .

O the ships of the sea! the lovers
Torn by them apart!...
The tide has nothing now to tell me,
The breakers break my heart!

TO SEA!

Give me the tiller; up with the sail!
Now let her swing to the breeze.
Out to sea with a dripping rail,
To sea, with a heart at ease!

Out of the Harbour! out of the Bay!
Out by the valiant Light,
Out by rocks where the young gulls lay--
And glad winds teach them flight!

Out of the Harbour! out of the Bay!
Out to the open sea!
O there's not in the world a way
To feel so wildly free!

So, let her quiver! So, let her leap!
So, let her dance the foam!
All life else is a narrow keep,
The sea alone is home!

GIVE OVER, O SEA!

Give over, O sea! You never shall reach Nirvana!
Your tides, like the tidal generations, ever shall rise and fall,
And your infinite waves find birth, rebirth, and billowy dissolution.

The years of your existence are unending.
The years of your unresting are forever.
The sun, who is desire, ever begets in you his passion,
And the moon is ever drawing you, with silvery soft alluring,
To surge and sway, to wander and fret, to waste yourself in foam.
So Buddha-calm shall never descend upon you.

And tho it may often seem you have found the Way,
Your tempest-sins return and quicken to wild reincarnations,
And again great life, pulsing and perilous,
Omnipotent life, that ever resurges thro the universe,
Lashes you back to striving, back to yearning, back to speech.
To utterance on all shores of the world
Of things unutterable.

Give over then, you never shall reach Nirvana!
Nor I, who am your acolyte for a moment;
Who swing a censer of fragrant words before your priestly feet,
That tread these altar-rocks, bedraped with weeds gently afloat,
And with the wild flutter of gulls wildly mysterious.

Give over and call your winds again to join you!
O chanter of deep enchantments, of uncharted litanies,
Call them and bid them say with you that life transcends retreat,
And that, in the temple of its Immanence,
There is no peace that does not spring daily from peacelessness,
And no Nirvana save in the lee of storm.

THE NUN

A lone palm leans in the moonlight,
Over a convent wall.
The sea below is waking and breaking
With a calm heave and fall.
A young nun sits at a window;
For Heaven she is too fair;
Yet even the dove of God might nest
In her bosom beating there.

A lone ship sails from the harbour:
Whom does it bear away?
Her lover who, sin-hearted, has parted
And left her but to pray?
She has no lover, nor ever
Has heard afar love's sigh.
Only the Convent's vesper vow
Has ever dimmed her eye.

For naught knows she of her beauty,
More than the palm of its peace:
And none shall cross her portal, to mortal
Desires to bend her knees.
The ways of the world have flowers,
And any who will pluck those;
But in His hand, against all harm,
God still will keep some rose.

LAST SIGHT OF LAND

The clouds in woe hang far and dim;
I look again, and lo,
Only a faint and shadow line
Of shore--I watch it go.

The gulls have left the ship and wheel
Back to the cliff's gray wraith.
Will it be so of all our thoughts
When we set sail on Death?

And what will the last sight be of life
As lone we fare and fast?
Grief and a face we love in mist--
Then night and awe too vast?

Or the dear light of Hope--like that,
Oh, see, from the lost shore
Kindling and calling "Onward, you
Shall reach the Evermore!"

THE END

On this and following pages are listed other books by Cale
Young Rice. They are all published by The Century Co., 353
Fourth Avenue, New York City.

SHADOWY THRESHOLDS

By CALE YOUNG RICE

"Cale Young Rice is far too great a pout to be acclaimed in some partisan circles.... He is intensely American ... as authentic an artist as Shelley or Keats.... He has the magic of Poe without that poet's morbidity.... He is America's living master-poet."--_D. F. Hannigan (The Rochester Post-Express)._

"This volume maintains Mr. Rice's usual high level and proves anew his right to one of the high places among modern poets."--_Edward J. Wheeler (Current Opinion)._

"Mr. Rice is modern in the broadest sense of that term. Many of his poems are without rhyme and have irregular metres, but they never offend thereby.... His place in contemporary first class company is secure.--_The Springfield Republican._

"A volume possessing range and variety, together with a lyric quality which distinguishes this poet, who ranks among the foremost American writers."--_The Post-Intelligencer (Seattle)._

"Mr. Rice in his dramas is an enchanter, and to cast a spell is better than to have uttered the most lovely lyrics--but he has done both."--_E. A. Jonas (The Louisville Herald)._

"A new volume showing again the power and beauty of Mr. Rice's genius."--_The Boston Globe._

"What a pleasure to take up a new book by Cale Young Rice. Here we have variety, if ever.... If one can only own one of his books this is a good volume to choose."--_The Galveston News._

"Cale Young Rice is a poet capable of sounding the deep imaginative strain not only with melody, but with vigor and power of thought. This volume will add another shining stone to his reputation."--_The San Francisco Chronicle._

"Once more a book of the same high order as all Mr. Rice's work."--_The Rochester Democrat-Chronicle._

"Shadowy Thresholds has as great a variety of poetic forms as any volume of late years.... Mr. Rice illumines many phases of life, uniting in his work the finish and romance of the older poetry with the directness that constitutes the best merit of the new."--_The Louisville Evening Post._

_12mo. 179 pages. Price $1.50_

WRAITHS AND REALITIES

By CALE YOUNG RICE

"In the writing of lyrics Mr. Rice is unequalled by any modern poet.... One must go outside of contemporary life to find anything of similar excellence."--_Gordon Ray Young (The Los Angeles Times)._

"A new book by Mr. Rice is always an event in American letters...."--_The New York Tribune._

"Here, for all to read, is poetic genius spurred and wrought upon ... by a rare and wondrous poetic inspiration.... It is like great chimes sounding--jangled at times or overborne--but always great."--_The Philadelphia North American._

"Mr. Rice in his narratives can tell such tales as the old ballad-makers would have gloated over, and can make them contemporary and convincing. He can create life tragedies or comedies in a few lines and leave the reader with a sense of having been given a full meal of circumstance.... He is original without striving to be so, and one can never be embarrassed by the affirmation that he has come to hold a high place among poets of America."--_The Chicago Tribune._

"Cale Young Rice has been credited with some of the finest poetry, and regarded as a distinguished master of lyric utterance, and this latest volume is warrant for such approval."--_The Brooklyn Eagle._

"We find in Mr. Rice the large and elemental vision a poet must have to serve his people when overwhelmed by elemental sorrows and passions. His poetry is a spiritual force interpreting life in the various phases of intellect and emotion, with a beauty of finish and sense of form that are unerring."--_The Louisville Post._

"All that has been said of Cale Young Rice, and that is much indeed, is justified in this latest volume."--_The San Francisco Chronicle._

"Cale Young Rice is a real poet of genuine and sincere inspiration, never reminiscent or imitative or obvious, but singing from a full heart his keen, meditative songs."--_The New York Times._

_12mo. 187 pages. Price $1.50_

COLLECTED PLAYS AND POEMS

By CALE YOUNG RICE

"The great quality of Cale Young Rice's work is that, amid all distractions and changes in contemporary taste, it remains true to the central drift of great poetry. His interests are very wide ... and his books open up a most varied world of emotion and romance."--_Gilbert Murray._

"The quality of Mr. Rice's work is high. It is seen at its best in his poetic dramas, which maintain an astonishing elevation and intensity of passion ... but his visionary and philosophical poems are nearly as fine. He has a thorough mastery of form, yet notwithstanding the ease of his verse it is never slipshod or mechanical."--_The Spectator (London)._

"With variations of phrase Cale Young Rice has been described by critics here and in America as "the most distinguished master of lyric utterance in the New World." ... He has dramatic genius ... and is a born maker of songs.... His later volumes confirm the judgment of those who have named him the first and most distinctive of modern American lyrists, and one of the world's true poets."--_F. Heath (The London Bookman)._

"Mr. Rice is an American poet whose reputation is deserved.... He has achieved a high position as poet and dramatist, a great fertility and variety of outlook being marked features of his work."--_The London Times._

"Foremost among writers who have brought America into prominence in the realm of modern thought is Mr. Cale Young Rice.... 'Collected Plays and Poems' is one of the best offerings of verse we have had for long. Indeed, it has real brilliance.... Mr. Rice's plays are masterful."--_The Book Monthly (London)._

"Cale Young Rice is highly esteemed by readers wherever English is the native speech."--_The Manchester Guardian._

"In Mr. Rice we have a voice such as America has rarely known before."--_The Rochester (N. Y.) Post-Express._

"Mr. Rice of today is the poet who sang to us yesterday of the big, vital things of life.... With real genius he brings to the soul a sense of things many of us have but dimly sensed in all our years."--_The Philadelphia Record._

"These volumes are an anthology wrought by a master hand and endowed with perennial vitality.... This writer is the most distinguished master of lyric utterance in the new world ... and he has contributed much to the scanty stock of American literary fame. Fashions in poetry come and go, and minor lights twinkle fitfully as they pass in tumultuous review. But these volumes are of the things that are eternal in poetic expression.... They embody the hopes and impulses of universal humanity."--_The Philadelphia North-American._

"Mr. Rice has been hailed by too many critics as the poet of his country, if not of his generation, not to create a demand for a full edition of his works."--_The Hartford (Conn.) Courant._

"This gathering of his forces stamps Mr. Rice as one of the world's true poets, remarkable alike for strength, versatility and beauty of expression."--_The Chicago Herald (Ethel M. Colton)._

"It is with no undue repetition that we speak of the very great range and very great variety of Mr. Rice's subject, inspiration, and mode of expression.... The passage of his spirit is truly from deep to deep."--_Margaret S. Anderson (The Louisville Evening Post)._

"It is good to find such sincere and beautiful work as is in these two volumes.... Here is a writer with no wish to purchase fame at the price of eccentricity of either form or subject."--_The Independent._

"Mr. Rice's style is that of the masters.... Yet it is one that is distinctively American.... He will live with our great poets."--_Louisville Herald (J. J. Cole)._

"Mr. Rice is an American by birth, but he is not merely an American poet. Over existence and the whole world his vision extends. He is a poet of human life and his range is uncircumscribed."--_The Baltimore Evening News._

"Viewing Mr. Rice's plays as a whole, I should say that his prime virtue is fecundity or affluence, the power to conceive and combine events resourcefully, and an abundance of pointed phrases which recalls and half restores the great Elisabethans. His aptitude for structure is great."--_The Nation (O. W. Firkins)._

"Mr. Rice has fairly won his singing robes and has a right to be ranked with the first of living poets. One must read the volumes to get an idea of their cosmopolitan breadth and fresh abiding charm.... The dramas, taken as a whole, represent the most important work of the kind that has been done by any living writer.... This work belongs to that great world where the mightiest spiritual and intellectual forces are forever contending; to that deeper life which calls for the rarest gifts of poetic expression."--_The Book News Monthly (Albert S. Henry)._

_12mo. 2 vols. Price $4.00_

The following volumes are now included in the author's
"Collected Plays and Poems," and are not obtainable
elsewhere:

At the World's Heart

"This book justifies the more than transatlantic reputation of its author."--_The Sheffield (England) Daily Telegraph._

Porzia: A Play

"It matters little that we hesitate between ranking Mr. Rice highest as dramatist or lyrist; what matters is that he has the faculty divine beyond any living poet of America; his inspiration is true, and his poetry is the real thing."--_The London Bookman._

Far Quests

"It shows a wide range of thought and sympathy, and real skill in workmanship, while occasionally it rises to heights of simplicity and truth, that suggest such inspiration as should mean lasting fame."--_The Daily Telegraph (London)._

The Immortal Lure: Four Plays

"It is great art--with great vitality."--_James Lane Allen._

"Different from Paola and Francesca, but excelling it--or any of Stephen Phillips's work--in a vivid presentment of a supreme moment in the lives of the characters."--_The New York Times._

Many Gods

"These poems are flashingly, glowingly full of the East.... What I am sure of in Mr. Rice is that here we have an American poet whom we may claim as ours."--_William Dean Howells, in The North American Review._

Nirvana Days

"Mr. Rice has the technical cunning that makes up almost the entire equipment of many poets nowadays, but human nature is more to him always ... and he has the feeling and imaginative sympathy without which all poetry is but an empty and vain thing."--_The London Bookman._

A Night in Avignon: A Play

"It is as vivid as a page from Browning. Mr. Rice has the dramatic pulse."--_James Huneker._

Yolanda of Cyprus: A Play

"It has real life and drama, not merely beautiful words, and so differs from the great mass of poetic plays."--_Prof. Gilbert Murray._

David: A Play

"It is safe to say that were Mr. Rice an Englishman or a Frenchman, his reputation as his country's most distinguished poetic dramatist would have been assured by a more universal sign of recognition."--_The Baltimore News._

Charles Di Tocca: A Play

"It is the most powerful, vital, and truly tragical drama written by an American for some years. There is genuine pathos, mighty yet never repellent passion, great sincerity and penetration, and great elevation and beauty of language."--_The Chicago Post._

Song-Surf

"Mr. Rice's work betrays wide sympathies with nature and life, and a welcome originality of sentiment and metrical harmony."--_Sydney Lee._

TRAILS SUNWARD

By CALE YOUNG RICE

"Cale Young Rice has written some of the finest poetry of the last decade, and is the author of the very best poetic dramas ever written by an American.... He is one of the few supreme lyrists ... and one of the few remaining lovers of beauty ... who write it. One of the very few writers of _vers libre_ who know just what they are doing."--_The Los Angles Times._

"Another book by Cale Young Rice ... one of the few poetic geniuses this country has produced.... In its sixty or more poems may be found the hall mark of individuality that denotes preeminence and signalizes independence."--_The Philadelphia North American._

"Mr. Rice attempts and succeeds in deepening the note of his singing ... keeping its brilliant technique, its intricate verse formation, but seeking all the while for words to interpret the profound things of life. The music of his lines is more perfect than ever, his rhythms fresh and varied."--_Littell's Living Age._

"Cale Young Rice's work is always simple and sincere ... but that does not prevent him from voicing his song with passion and virility. Nearly all his poems have elevation of thought and feeling, with beauty of imagery and music."--_The New York Times._

"Whether the forms of this book are lyrical, narrative, or dramatic, there is an excellence of workmanship that denotes the master hand.... And while the range of ideas is broad, the treatment of each is distinguished by a strength and beauty remarkably fine."--_The Continent (Chicago)._

"Mr. Rice proves the fine argument of his preface ... for this book has in it form and beauty and a full reflection of the externals as well as the soul of the America he loves."--_The Philadelphia Public Ledger._

"The work of this poet always demands and receives unstinted admiration.... His is not the poetic fashion of the moment, but of all poetic time."--_The Chicago Herald._

"In 'Trails Sunward,' Mr. Rice demonstrates as heretofore the possibility of attaining poetic growth and originality even in the Twentieth Century, without extremism.... Sanity linked with vitality and breadth in art make for permanence, and one can but feel that Mr. Rice builds for more than a day."--_The Louisville Courier Journal._

"I rarely use the term 'sublimity,' yet in touches of 'The Foreseers,' particularly in its cavern-set opening, I should say that Mr. Rice had scaled that eminence."--_O. W. Firkins (The Nation)._

_12mo. 150 pages. Price $1.50_

EARTH AND NEW EARTH

By CALE YOUNG RICE

"America has today no poet who answers so well the multiplex tests of poetry as does Cale Young Rice."--_New York Sun._

"Glancing through the reviews quoted at the end of 'Earth and New Earth' we note that we have said some very enthusiastic things in praise of the poetry of Cale Young Rice, and yet there is not an adjective we would withdraw. On the contrary each new volume only confirms the expectation of the better work this writer was to produce."--_The San Francisco Chronicle._

"This is a volume of verse rich in dramatic quality and beauty of conception.... Every poem is quotable and the collection must appeal to all who can appreciate the highest forms of modern verse."--_The Bookseller (New York)._

"Any one familiar with 'Cloister Lays,' 'The Mystic,' etc., does not need to be told that they rank with the very best poetry. And Mr. Rice's dramas are not equaled by any other American author's.... And when those who are loyal to poetic traditions cherished through the whole history of our language contemplate the anemia and artificiality of contemporaries, they can but assert that Mr. Rice has the grasp and sweep, the rhythm, imagery and pulsating sympathy, which in wondering admiration are ascribed to genius."--_The Los Angeles Times._

"This latest collection shows no diminution in Mr. Rice's versatility or power of expression. Its poems are serious, keen, distinctively free and vitally spiritual in thought."--_The Continent (Chicago)._

"Mr. Rice is concerned with thoughts that are more than timely; they represent a large vision of the world events now transpiring ... and his affirmation of the spiritual in such an hour establishes him in the immemorial office of the poet-prophet.... The volume is a worthy addition to the large amount of his work."--_Anna L. Hopper in The Louisville Courier-Journal._

"Cale Young Rice is the greatest living American poet."--_D. F. Hannigan, Lit. Ed. The Rochester Post-Express._

"The indefinable spirit of swift imaginative suggestion is never lacking. The problems of fate are still big with mystery and propounded with tense elemental dramatism."--_The Philadelphia North-American._

"The work of Cale Young Rice emerges clearly as the most distinguished offering of this country to the combined arts of poetry and the drama. 'Earth and New Earth' strikes a ringing new note of the earth which shall be after the War."--_The Memphis Commercial-Appeal._

_12mo. 158 pages. $1.50_

TURN ABOUT TALES

(PROSE)

By CALE YOUNG RICE and ALICE HEGAN RICE

"This volume of stories should hold its own with any collection likely to be published this year."--_New York Post (The Literary Review)._

"American writers have been distinctive as narrators of the short story, but few, if any, volumes of such stories have recently been published in this country equal to 'Turn About Tales.'"--_D. F. Hannigan (The Rochester Post-Express)._

"The gamut of the volume runs from spiritualism to the depths. It contains something of almost anything one happens to want. Better yet, it contains something new."--_The Boston Transcript._

"Mr. Rice has written well--so well as to justify prediction that he will, if he elect to do so, achieve greater distinction as a short story writer than as a poet. His 'Lowry,' 'Francella' and 'Aaron Harwood,' to cite a few of the stories, meet the test of artistic stories.... Each leaves an impression that will impel re-reading."--_Galveston News._

"Both writers portray, in their best vein, a consummate though distinctive skill in analyzing and delineating human emotions and experience."--_Buffalo Commercial._

"Those who have read Mr. Rice's poetry will find his dramatic genius manifest in these stories."--_The Watchman, N. Y._

"Mrs. Rice's humor and pathos combine well with Mr. Rice's mastery of diction and deep human understanding."--_Milwaukee Journal._

"Each story is notable for beauty of technique ... each has its definite appeal."--_Louisville Evening Post (Margaret S. Anderson)._

"Each of the stories is of such finished workmanship as to make reading of it an unadulterated pleasure."--_Baltimore Sun._

"The book is one of the best of the kind in this year's American fiction."--_The Spectator (Portland, Ore.)_

"Mr. Rice has grappled with the constructive problems of his time, so one finds them without surprise in this newly adopted vehicle.... Three of his stories have a realism as relentless as Chekov's ... and it goes without saying that his stories are technically admirable."--_Louisville Courier-Journal._

"Mr. Rice so lives through his characters that, as Whitman says, he 'Is that man' of whom he writes."--_Pittsburg Sun._

"The same dramatic power and beauty that mark Mr. Rice's lyrics will be found in these prose stories."--_Cincinnati Times-Star._

"One seldom finds a book of short stories so satisfying throughout."--_Minneapolis Journal._

_Price $1.90_