MINOR SEA-PIECES

THE MAN-OF-WAR HAWK

YON black man-of-war hawk that wheels in the light
O’er the black ship’s white sky-s’l, sunned cloud to the sight,
Have we low-flyers wings to ascend to his height?

 

No arrow can reach him; nor thought can attain
To the placid supreme in the sweep of his reign.

THE TUFT OF KELP

ALL dripping in tangles green,
Cast up by a lonely sea,
If purer for that, O Weed,
Bitterer, too, are ye?

THE MALDIVE SHARK

ABOUT the Shark, phlegmatical one,
Pale sot of the Maldive sea,
The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim,
How alert in attendance be.
From his saw-pit of mouth, from his charnel of maw,
They have nothing of harm to dread,
But liquidly glide on his ghastly flank
Or before his Gorgonian head;
Or lurk in the port of serrated teeth
In white triple tiers of glittering gates,
And there find a haven when peril’s abroad,
An asylum in jaws of the Fates!
They are friends; and friendly they guide him to prey,
Yet never partake of the treat—
Eyes and brains to the dotard lethargic and dull,
Pale ravener of horrible meat.

CROSSING THE TROPICS (From “The Saya-y-Manto”)

WHILE now the Pole Star sinks from sight,
The Southern Cross it climbs the sky;
But losing thee, my love, my light,
O bride but for one bridal night,
The loss no rising joys supply.

 

Love, love, the Trade Winds urge abaft,
And thee, from thee, they steadfast waft.

 

By day the blue and silver sea
And chime of waters blandly fanned—
Nor these, nor Gama’s stars to me
May yield delight, since still for thee
I long as Gama longed for land.
I yearn, I yearn, reverting turn,
My heart it streams in wake astern.

 

When, cut by slanting sleet, we swoop
Where raves the world’s inverted year,
If roses all your porch shall loop,
Not less your heart for me will droop
Doubling the world’s last outpost drear.

 

O love, O love, these oceans vast:
Love, love, it is as death were past!

THE BERG

A Dream

I SAW a ship of martial build
(Her standards set, her brave apparel on)
Directed as by madness mere
Against a stolid iceberg steer,
Nor budge it, though the infatuate ship went down.
The impact made huge ice-cubes fall
Sullen, in tons that crashed the deck;
But that one avalanche was all—
No other movement save the foundering wreck.

 

Along the spurs of ridges pale,
Not any slenderest shaft and frail,
A prism over glass-green gorges lone,
Toppled; nor lace of traceries fine,
Nor pendant drops in grot or mine
Were jarred, when the stunned ship went down.

 

Nor sole the gulls in cloud that wheeled
Circling one snow-flanked peak afar,
But nearer fowl the floes that skimmed
And crystal beaches, felt no jar.
No thrill transmitted stirred the lock
Of jack-straw needle-ice at base;
Towers undermined by waves—the block
Atilt impending—kept their place.
Seals, dozing sleek on sliddery ledges
Slipt never, when by loftier edges
Through very inertia overthrown,
The impetuous ship in bafflement went down.

 

Hard Berg (methought), so cold, so vast,
With mortal damps self-overcast;
Exhaling still thy dankish breath—
Adrift dissolving, bound for death;
Though lumpish thou, a lumbering one—
A lumbering lubbard loitering slow,
Impingers rue thee and go down,
Sounding thy precipice below,
Nor stir the slimy slug that sprawls
Along thy dead indifference of walls.

THE ENVIABLE ISLES (From “Rammon”)

THROUGH storms you reach them and from storms are free.
Afar descried, the foremost drear in hue,
But, nearer, green; and, on the marge, the sea
Makes thunder low and mist of rainbowed dew.
But, inland, where the sleep that folds the hills
A dreamier sleep, the trance of God, instills—
On uplands hazed, in wandering airs aswoon,
Slow-swaying palms salute love’s cypress tree
Adown in vale where pebbly runlets croon
A song to lull all sorrow and all glee.

 

Sweet-fern and moss in many a glade are here,
Where, strown in flocks, what cheek-flushed myriads lie
Dimpling in dream—unconscious slumberers mere,
While billows endless round the beaches die.