I took the trail to the wooded canyon,
The trail from the sea:
For I heard a calling in me,
A landward calling irresistible in me: —

Have done with things of the sea – things of the soul;
Have done with waters that slip away from under you.
Have done with things faithless, things unfathomable and vain;
With the vast deeps of Time and the Hereafter.

Have done with the fog-breather, the fog-beguiler;
With the foam of the never-resting.
Have done with tides and passions, tides and mysteries for a season.
Have done with infinite yearnings cast adrift on infinite vagueness —
With never a certain sail, never a rudder sure for guidance,
With never a compass-needle free of desire.

For the ways of earth are good, as well as sea-ways,
The peaks of it as well as ports unknown.
Not only perils matter, stormy perils, over the pathless,
Not only the shoals that sink your ship of dreams.
Not only the phantom lure of far horizons,
Not only the windy guess at the goals of God.

But morning matters, and dew upon the rose,
And noon, shadowless noon, and simple sheep on the pastures straying.
And toil matters, amid the accustomed corn,
And peace matters, the valley-spirit of peace, unprone to wander,
Unprone to pierce to the world's end – and past it.
And zephyrs matter, that never lift up a sail,
Save that of the thistle voyaging over the meadow.

And the lark – oh – the sunny lark – as well as the songless petrel,
Who cries the foamy length of a thousand leagues.
And silence matters, silence free of all surging,
Silence, the spirit of happiness and home.

And oh how much the laugh of a child matters:
More than the green of an island suddenly lit by sun at dawn.
And friends, the greetings of friends, how they matter:
More than ships that meet and fling a wild ahoy and pass,
On any alien tides however enchanted.
And the face of love, the evening face of love, at a window waiting,
Shall ever a kindled Light on any long-unlifting shore,
Shall ever a Harbor Light like that light matter?

Ah no! so enough of the sea and the soul for a season.
Too long followed they leave life as a dream,
Reality as a mirage when port is made.
"Ever in sight of the human," is the helm-word of the wisest,
For earth is not earth to one upon the flood of infinity;
To the eye, then, it is but an atom-star, adrift, and oh,
No longer warm with the beating of countless hearts.

No longer warm with the human throb – the simple breath of today,
With yester-hours or the near dreams of to-morrow.
No longer rich with the little innumerous blooms of brief delights,
Nor all divinely drenched with sympathy.
No longer green with the humble grass of duties that must grow,
To clothe it against desert aridity.
No longer zoned with the air of hope, no longer large with faith —
No longer heaven enough – if Heaven fails us!

HAUNTED SEAS

A gleaming glassy ocean,
Under a sky of gray;
A tide that dreams of motion,
Or moves, as the dead may;
A bird that dips and wavers
Over lone waters round,
Then with a cry that quavers
Is gone – a spectral sound.

The brown sad sea-weed drifting
Far from the land, and lost.
The faint warm fog unlifting,
The derelict long-tossed,
But now at rest – tho haunted
By the death-scenting shark,
Whose prey no more undaunted
Slips from it, spent and stark.

SEA LURE

(The Maine Coast)

It is so, O sea! wild roses
Bloom here in the scent of your brine.
And the juniper round them closes,
And the bays amid them twine,
To guard and to praise their beauty;
And the gulls above them cry,
And the stern rocks stand on duty,
Where the surf beats white and high.

It is so, O sea! wild roses,
With the day-long fog bedrenched,
Have come from their inland closes
With a thirst for you unquenched.
And over your cliffs they clamber,
And over your vast they gaze;
For the tides of you can enamour
Even them with their woodland ways.

Yea, the passion of you and the power
And the largeness are a lure
To even the heart of a flower,
O sea, with a heart unsure!
For love is a thing unsated,
Nor ever in any breast
Has it dwelt, all want abated,
At rest.

SONGS TO A. H. R

I

MINGLINGS

It is the old old vision,
The moonlit sea – and you.
I cannot make disseverance
Between the two.
For all the world's wide beauty
To me you seem,
All that I love in shadow
Or glow or gleam.

It is the old old murmur,
The sea's sound and your voice.
God in his Bliss between them
Could make no choice.
For all the world's deep music
In you I hear:
Nor shall I ask death, ever,
For aught more dear.

II

LOVE AND INFINITY

Across the kindling twilight moon
A late gull wings to rest.
The sea is murmuring underneath
Its vast eternal quest.
The coast-light flashes over the tide
A red and warning eye,
And oh the world is very wide,
But you are nigh!

The stars come out from zone to zone,
The wind knows every one
And blows their message to my heart,
As it has ever done.
"They are all God's," it tells me, "all,
However huge or high."
But ah I could not trust its call —
Were you not by!

III

RECOMPENSE

Not if I chose from a world of days
Could I find a day like this.
The sky is a wreath of azure haze
And the sea an azure bliss.
The surf runs racing the young salt wind,
Shouting without a fear
Over reef, bar, cliff and scaur,
Where you and I lie near.

O you and I who have watched the sky
And sea from many a shore!
You, love, and I who will live and die —
And watch the sea no more!
O joy of the world! Joy of love,
Joy that can say to death,
"Tho you end all with your wanton pall,
We two have had this breath!"

IV

AT THE EBB-HOUR

As I hear, thro the midnight sighing,
The low ebb-tide withdrawn,
And gulls on the dark cliff crying
For far discernless dawn,
It seems that all life is lying
Within your every breath,
Yet I can not believe in dying,
Or death.

As I hear, from the gray church tower,
The bell's unfailing sound
Peal forth hour after hour
To night's lone reaches round,
It seems as if Time's wan power
Would sear all things apace —
All, save in my heart one flower,
Your face.

V

IN A DARK HOUR

You are not with me – only the moon,
The sea and the gulls' cry, out of tune;
The myriad cry of the gulls still strewn
On the sands where the tide will enter soon.

You are not with me, only the breath
Of the wind – and then the wind's death.
A shrouding silence then that saith,
"Even as wind love vanisheth."

You are not with me – only fear,
As old as earth's first frenzied bier
That severed two whose hearts were near,
And left one with all Life unclear.

VI

VIA AMOROSA

When we two walk, my love, on the path
The moon makes over the sea,
To the end of the world where sorrow hath
An end that is ecstasy,
Should we not think of the other road
Of wearying dust and stone
Our feet would fare did each but care
To follow the way alone?

When we two slip at night to the skies
And find one star that we keep
As a trysting-place to which our eyes
May lead our souls ere sleep,
Should we not pause for a little space
And think how many must sigh
Because they gaze over starry ways
With no heart-comrade by?

When we two then lie down to our dreams
That deepen still the delight
Of our wandering where stars and streams
Stray in immortal light,
Should we not grieve with the myriads
From East of earth to West
Who lay them down at night but to drown
A longing for some loved breast?

Ah, yes, for life has a thousand gifts,
But love it is gives life.
Who walks thro his world in loneness lifts
A soul that is sorrow-rife.
But they to whom it is given to tread
The moon-path and not sink
Can ever say the unhappiest way
Earth has is fair, to the brink.

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)

I

Behind me lie the Everglades,
The mystic grassy Everglades,
Where the moccasin and the Seminole glide
In secret silent Indian ways.
Before me lies the Gulf,
The cup of blue bright tropic waters,
Held to the parched lips of the South
To cool and quench its thirst.

Behind me lie the Everglades,
Before me lies the Gulf,
Which the sunset soon shall change to wine,
A Eucharist for the longing soul.
Its rim of land shall be transformed
To Mexic opal and chrysoprase,
And then shall come the moon
As calm as a thought of Christ.

As calm as a thought of Christ —
Over the cup's sand-rim enchased
With palm and pine, Floridian friends,
Saying their twilight litanies;
While homeward flies the heron
To his island cypress in the swamp,
Which Spanish mosses drape and the moon
Silverly soothes to peace.

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.