Places I love come back to me like music,
Hush me and heal me when I am very tired;
I see the oak woods at Saxton's flaming
In a flare of crimson by the frost newly fired;
And I am thirsty for the spring in the valley
As for a kiss ungiven and long desired.
I know a bright world of snowy hills at Boonton,
A blue and white dazzling light on everything one sees,
The ice-covered branches of the hemlocks sparkle
Bending low and tinkling in the sharp thin breeze,
And iridescent crystals fall and crackle on the snow-crust
With the winter sun drawing cold blue shadows from the trees.
Violet now, in veil on veil of evening
The hills across from Cromwell grow dreamy and far;
A wood-thrush is singing soft as a viol
Oh Earth, you are too dear to-night,
How can I sleep while all around
Floats rainy fragrance and the far
Deep voice of the ocean that talks to the ground?
Oh Earth, you gave me all I have,
I love you, I love you,--oh what have I
That I can give you in return--
Except my body after I die?
In the profoundest ocean
There is a rainbow shell,
It is always there, shining most stilly
Under the greatest storm waves
And under the happy little waves
That the old Greek called ‘ripples of laughter.’
And you listen, the rainbow shell
Sings--in the profoundest ocean.
It is always there, singing most silently!
The tide makes music
At the foot of the beach;
The waves sing together
Rumble of breakers.
Ships there are swaying,
Into the distance,
Thrum of the cordage,
Slap of the sails.
The tide makes music
At the foot of the beach;
Low notes of an organ
'Gainst the dull clang of bells.
The tide's tense purple
On the untrodden sand:
Its throat is blue,
Its hands are gold.
It lies alone upon a tide-swept shore,
Above a crescent beach of silver sand,
Flung high upon the rocks by some great hand
Stretched from the dark, whose fingers clutched and tore
The main-mast from the ship. Above it soar
White gulls, and near in wild-rose tangle stand
Old twisted pines, where song-birds of the land
Mingle soft singing with the ocean's roar.
And through long summer days it dreams old dreams
Of far-off southern forests, and the sighing
Of wind-blown boughs above bird-haunted streams;
But when the storm sets the white spindrift flying
It thrills and trembles with the old unrest,
And shakes the wild-rose petals from its breast.
I've been along the quarry road,
And I have watched men digging wells,
And everywhere it was the same--
The stones were full of little shells.
And they are packed away in rock;
They're under sand and under clay;
And some one said that they were left
When the ocean went away.
I saw them in the stones that make
A church, and in a bridge.
They're hidden in the solid rock
But they show along the edge.
You see them in foundation stones;
They show in creeks and waterfalls;
And once I saw them on the jail--
More little shells in walls.
When a great wave disturbs the ocean cold
And throws the bottom waters to the sky,
Strange apparitions on the surface lie,
Great battered ships, stripped of their gloss and gold,
And, writhing in their pain, sea-monsters old,
Who stain the waters with a bloody dye,
With unaccustomed mouths bellow and cry
And vex the waves with struggling fin and fold.
And with these too come little trivial things
Tossed from the deeps by the same casual hand ;
A faint sea flower, dragged from the lowest sand,
That will not undulate its luminous wings
In the slow tides again, lies dead and swings
Along the muddy ripples to the land.
Brother, I am fire
Surging under the ocean floor.
I shall never meet you, brother —
Not for years, anyhow;
Maybe thousands of years, brother.
Then I will warm you,
Hold you close, wrap you in circles,
Use you and change you —
Maybe thousands of years, brother.
Must I round my life to a song,
As the waves wear smooth the shore-stone?
Shall the mortal beat and throb
Of this heart of mine
Be only to crumble a dream,
And fashion the pebbles of fancy,
That the tides of time may cover,
Or a child may find?
Little in truth it matters;
But this at the most I know:
Infinite is the ocean
That thunders upon man's soul,
And the sooner the soul falls broken,
The smoother will be its song!
O! how I faint when I of you do write,
Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,
And in the praise thereof spends all his might,
To make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame!
But since your worth--wide as the ocean is,--
The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,
My saucy bark, inferior far to his,
On your broad main doth wilfully appear.
Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,
Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride;
Or, being wrack'd, I am a worthless boat,
He of tall building, and of goodly pride:
Then if he thrive and I be cast away,
The worst was this,--my love was my decay.
LO! the unbounded sea!
On its breast a Ship starting, spreading all her sails—an ample Ship,
carrying even her moonsails;
The pennant is flying aloft, as she speeds, she speeds so stately—below,
emulous waves press forward,
They surround the Ship, with shining curving motions, and foam.
He wanders, like a day-appearing dream,
Through the dim wildernesses of the mind;
Through desert woods and tracts, which seem
Like ocean, homeless, boundless, unconfined.