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THE sea is at ebb, and the sound of her utmost word

Is soft as the least wave's lapse in a still small reach.

From bay unto bay, on quest of a goal deferred,

From headland ever to headland and breach to breach

Where earth gives ear to the message that all days preach

With changes of gladness and sadness that cheer and chide,

The lone way lures me along by a chance untried

That haply, if hope dissolve not and faith be whole,

Not all for nought shall I seek, with a dream for guide,

The goal that is not, and ever again the goal.

The trackless ways are untravelled of sail or bird;

The hoar wave hardly recedes from the soundless beach.

The silence of instant noon goes nigh to be heard,

The viewless void to be visible: all and each,

A closure of calm no clamor of storm can breach

Concludes and confines and absorbs them on either side,

All forces of light and of life and the live world's pride.

Sands hardly ruffled of ripples that hardly roll

Seem ever to show as in reach of a swift brief stride [goal. The goal that is not, and ever again the

The waves are a joy to the seamew, the meads to the herd,

And a joy to the heart is a goal that it may not reach.

No sense that for ever the limits of sense engird,

No hearing or sight that is vassal to form or speech,

Learns ever the secret that shadow and silence teach,

Hears ever the notes that or ever they swell subside,

Sees ever the light that lights not the loud world's tide,

Clasps ever the cause of the lifelong scheme's control

Wherethrough we pursue, till the waters of life be dried, [goal.

The goal that is not, and ever again the

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Half the path is broken, half the banks divide;

Flawed and crumbled, riven and rent, they cleave and slide

Toward the ridged and wrinkled waste of girdling sand

Deep beneath, whose furrows tell how far and wide

Wind is lord and change is sovereign of the strand.

Star by star on the unsunned waters twiring down,

Golden spear-points glance against a silver shield.

Over banks and bents, across the headland's crown,

As by pulse of gradual plumes through twilight wheeled,

Soft as sleep, the waking wind awakes the weald.

Moor and copse and fallow, near or far descried,

Feel the mild wings move, and gladden where they glide:

Silence uttering love that all things understand,

Bids the quiet fields forget that hard beside

Wind is lord and change is sovereign of

the strand.

Yet may sight, ere all the hoar soft shade grow brown, Hardly reckon half the rifts and rents unhealed

Where the scarred

cliffs downward sundering drive and drown, Hewn as if with stroke of swords in tempest steeled,

Wielded as the night's will and the wind's may wield.

Crowned and zoned in vain with flowers of autumn-tide,

Life and love seek harborage on the landward side;

Wind is lord and change is sovereign of the strand.

Friend, though man be less than these, for all his pride,

Yet, for all his weakness, shall not hope abide?

Wind and change can wreck but life and waste but land:

Truth and trust are sure, though here till all subside

Wind is lord and change is sovereign of the strand. 1884.

IN THE WATER

THE sea is awake, and the sound of the

song of the joy of her waking is rolled From afar to the star that recedes, from anear to the wastes of the wild wide shore.

Her call is a trumpet compelling us homeward: if dawn in her east be acold,

From the sea shall we crave not her grace to rekindle the life that it kindled before,

Her breath to requicken, her bosom to rock us, her kisses to bless as of yore? For the wind, with his wings half open, at pause in the sky, neither fettered nor free.

Leans waveward and flutters the ripple to laughter and fain would the twain of us be

Where lightly the wave yearns forward from under the curve of the deep dawn's dome,

And, full of the morning and fired with the pride of the glory thereof and the glee,

Strike out from the shore as the heart in us bids and beseeches, athirst for the foam.

Life holds not an hour that is better to live in the past is a tale that is told, The future a sun-flecked shadow, alive and asleep, with a blessing in store. As we give us again to the waters, the rapture of limbs that the waters enfold

Is less than the rapture of spirit whereby, though the burden it quits were sore, Our souls and the bodies they wield at their will are absorbed in the life they adore

In the life that endures no burden, and bows not the forehead, and bends not the knee

In the life everlasting of earth and of heaven, in the laws that atone and agree,

In the measureless music of things, in the fervor of forces that rest or that roam, That cross and return and reissue, as I after you and as you after me Strike out from the shore as the heart in us bids and beseeches, athirst for the foam.

For, albeit he were less than the least of them, haply the heart of a man may be bold

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To rejoice in the word of the sea, as a mother's that saith to the son she bore, 'Child, was not the life in thee mine, and my spirit the breath in thy lips from of old?

Have I let not thy weakness exult in my strength, and thy foolishness learn of my lore?

Have I helped not or healed not thine anguish, or made not the might of thy gladness more?"

And surely his heart should answer, "The light of the love of my life is in thee." She is fairer than earth, and the sun is not

fairer, the wind is not blither than she: From my youth hath she shown me the joy of her bays that I crossed, of her cliffs that I clomb,

Till now that the twain of us here, in desire of the dawn and in trust of the sea,

Strike out from the shore as the heart in us bids and beseeches, athirst for the foam.

Friend, earth is a harbor of refuge for winter, a covert whereunder to flee When day is the vassal of night, and the strength of the hosts of her mightier than he;

But here is the presence adored of me, here my desire is at rest and at home. There are cliffs to be climbed upon land,

there are ways to be trodden and ridden but we

Strike out from the shore as the heart in us bids and beseeches, athirst for the foam. 1884.

THE SUNBOWS

SPRAY of song that springs in April, light of love that laughs through May, Live and die and live for ever: nought of all things far less fair

Keeps a surer life than these that seem to pass like fire away.

In the souls they live which are but all the brighter that they were ; In the hearts that kindle, thinking what delight of old was there. Wind that shapes and lifts and shifts them bids perpetual memory play Over dreams and in and out of deeds and thoughts which seem to wear Light that leaps and runs and revels through the springing flames of spray.

Dawn is wild upon the waters where we drink of dawn to-day:

Wide, from wave to wave rekindling in rebound through radiant air, Flash the fires unwoven and woven again of wind that works in play, Working wonders more than heart may note or sight may wellnigh dare, Wefts of rarer light than colors rain from heaven, though this be rare. Arch on arch unbuilt in building, reared and ruined ray by ray, Breaks and brightens, laughs and lessens, even till eyes may hardly bear Light that leaps and runs and revels through the springing flames of spray.

Year on year sheds light and music rolled and flashed from bay to bay Round the summer capes of time and winter headlands keen and bare Whence the soul keeps watch, and bids her vassal memory watch and pray, If perchance the dawn may quicken, or perchance the midnight spare. Silence quells not music, darkness takes not sunlight in her snare; Shall not joys endure that perish? Yea, saith dawn, though night say nay: Life on life goes out, but very life enkindles everywhere

Light that leaps and runs and revels through the springing flames of spray.

Friend, were life no more than this is, well would yet the living fare. All aflower and all afire and all flung heavenward, who shall say

Such a flash of life were worthless? This is worth a world of careLight that leaps and runs and revels through the springing flames of spray. 1884.

ON THE VERGE

HERE begins the sea that ends not till the world's end. Where we stand, Could we know the next high sea-mark set beyond these waves that gleam, We should know what never man hath known, nor eye of man hath scanned. Nought beyond these coiling clouds that melt like fume of shrines that steam Breaks or stays the strength of waters till they pass our bounds of dream. Where the waste Land's End leans westward, all the seas it watches roll Find their border fixed beyond them, and a worldwide shore's control: These whereby we stand, no shore beyond us limits: these are free.

Gazing hence, we see the water that grows iron round the Pole, From the shore that hath no shore beyond it set in all the sea.

Sail on sail along the sea-line fades and flashes here on land

Flash and fade the wheeling wings on

wings of mews that plunge and scream. Hour on hour along the line of life and time's evasive strand

Shines and darkens, wanes and waxes,

slays and dies: and scarce they seem More than motes that thronged and trembled in the brief noon's breath and beam.

Some with crying and wailing, some

with notes like sound of bells that toll, Some with sighing and laughing, some with words that blessed and made us whole,

Passed, and left us, and we know not

what they were, nor what were we. Would we know, being mortal? Never breath of answering whisper stole From the shore that hath no shore beyond it set in all the sea.

Shadows, would we question darkness? Ere our eyes and brows be fanned Round with airs of twilight, washed with dews from sleep's eternal stream, Would we know sleep's guarded secret? Ere the fire consume the brand, Would it know if yet its ashes may requicken? yet we deem

Surely man may know, or ever night unyoke her starry team,

What the dawn shall be, or if the dawn shall be not yea, the scroll Would we read of sleep's dark scripture, pledge of peace or doom of dole. Ah, but here man's heart leaps, yearning toward the gloom with venturous glee, Though his pilot eye behold nor bay nor harbor, rock nor shoal,

From the shore that hath no shore beyond it set in all the sea.

Friend, who knows if death indeed have life or life have death for goal? Day nor night can tell us, nor may seas declare nor skies unroll

What has been from everlasting, or if aught shall alway be.

Silence answering only strikes response reverberate on the soul

From the shore that hath no shore beyond it set in all the sea. 1884.

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