Swing, swing, and swoon,
Morning, evening, noon,
And with night, sleep.
If you must, weep —
But here, here with me.
Swing like the sea
Where waves are tall;
Torrents and the three
Tides fall. . . .
Let the end be
With the last sweep :
Swoon, swoon with me —
Then sleep.
Over you, over you, over,
I hang like a wave, like a lover,
Like a scimitar edged with hate ;
Too heavy with grief to be straight
And far,
Too frail to ever discover
How to fall like a wave or a lover —
Or a blue-thin scimitar.
If I could hang all the foam of the sea in my hair,
If I could sing all the songs that were ever invented,
If I could kiss all the pebbles that ever there were,
If I could hang all the foam of the sea in my hair,
If I could drink all the waves as they break over there,
Should I then be contented?
If I could hang all the foam of the sea in my hair?
If I could sing all the songs that were ever invented?
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.
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!
I am only a note in the chorus,
A leaf in the fluttering June,
A wave on the deep.
These things that I struggle to utter
Have all been uttered before.
In many another heart
The selfsame song was born,
The ancient ache endured,
The timeless wonder faced,
The unanswered question nursed,
The resurgent hunger felt,
And the eternal failure known!
But glad is the lip of its whisper;
The wave, of its life;
The leaf, of its lisp;
And glad for its hour is my soul
Red foxgloves against a yellow wall streaked with plum-coloured shadows ;
A lady with a blue and red sunshade ;
The slow dash of waves upon a parapet.
That is all.
Non-existent — immortal —
As solid as the centre of a ring of fine gold.
When I am alone,
The wind in the pine-trees
Is like the shuffling of waves
Upon the wooden sides of a boat.
The moon reached in cold hands across the sill
And touched me as I lay sleeping;
And in my sleep I thought of sorrowful things :
I wakened, and I lay weeping.
I could hear on the beach below the small waves break
And fall on the silver shingle,
And the sound of a footstep passing in the street
Where lamplight and moonlight mingle.
And I said : "All day I can turn my face to the sun
And lead my thoughts to laughter;
But I hope in my heart that I never shall sleep again
Because of the pain thereafter."
The moon's pale fingers wandered across my face
And the arm where my hot cheek rested,
And because of the tears in my eyes I could not see
Where the black waves rocked moon-crested.