Chapter VII: Transfusion

A shoal-light flashes east,
And livid lightning west,
The silvery dark night-sea between,
On which we ride at rest,
And gaze far, far away
Into the fretless skies,
World-sadness in our thought--but ah,
Content within our eyes.

The ship's bell strikes--the sound
Floats shrouded to our ears,
Then suddenly, as at a touch,
The universe appears
A Presence Infinite
That penetrates our love
And makes us one with night and sea
And all the stars above.

NEED OF STORM

(_Naples-on-the-Gulf_)

On the green floor of the Gulf the wind is walking,
Printing it with invisible feet;
The tide is talking.

Purple and grey the horizon walls them round
With purpler clouds.
They wander in it like guests gently astray
In a house deep mystery shrouds.

I do not know the speech of the tide,
For too articulate have become my years:
Beauty brings only words, not breathless tears.

So the young heron fishing there in the foam
On the sand's edge,
Would once have taken my spirit far, far home
To the infinite, when he vanished thro the gloam.

But now I am left behind on the beach--a shell
That no more knows the wonder of the sea's swell,
Or more than the empty echo of its knell.

To sea then, Life, wildly to sea with a storm
Sweep me again,
From the smooth dull beach of custom where I lie,
That I may feel once more
The swaying surge of passion thro me swarm!

A FLORIDA INTERLUDE

(_Naples-on-the-Gulf_)