His flimsy sails abroad on the wind Are s.h.i.+vered with fairy thunder; On a line that sings to the light of his wings He makes for the lands of wonder.
He harries the ports of the Hollyhocks, And levies on poor Sweetbrier; He drinks the whitest wine of Phlox, And the Rose is his desire.
He hangs in the Willows a night and a day; He rifles the Buckwheat patches; Then battens his store of pelf galore Under the tautest hatches.
He woos the Poppy and weds the Peach, Inveigles Daffodilly, And then like a tramp abandons each For the gorgeous Canada Lily.
There"s not a soul in the garden world But wishes the day were shorter, When Mariner B. puts out to sea With the wind in the proper quarter.
Or, so they say! But I have my doubts; For the flowers are only human, And the valor and gold of a vagrant bold Were always dear to woman.
He dares to boast, along the coast, The beauty of Highland Heather,-- How he and she, with night on the sea, Lay out on the hills together.
He pilfers from every port of the wind, From April to golden autumn; But the thieving ways of his mortal days Are those his mother taught him.
His morals are mixed, but his will is fixed; He prospers after his kind, And follows an instinct, compa.s.s-sure, The philosophers call blind.
And that is why, when he comes to die, He"ll have an easier sentence Than some one I know who thinks just so, And then leaves room for repentance.
He never could box the compa.s.s round; He doesn"t know port from starboard; But he knows the gates of the Sundown Straits, Where the choicest goods are harbored.
He never could see the Rule of Three, But he knows a rule of thumb Better than Euclid"s, better than yours, Or the teachers" yet to come.
He knows the smell of the hydromel As if two and two were five; And hides it away for a year and a day In his own hexagonal hive.
Out in the day, hap-hazard, alone, Booms the old vagrant hummer, With only his whim to pilot him Through the splendid vast of summer.
He steers and steers on the slant of the gale, Like the fiend or Vanderdecken; And there"s never an unknown course to sail But his crazy log can reckon.
He drones along with his rough sea-song And the throat of a salty tar, This devil-may-care, till he makes his lair By the light of a yellow star.
He looks like a gentleman, lives like a lord, And works like a Trojan hero; Then loafs all winter upon his h.o.a.rd, With the mercury at zero.
A SONG BY THE Sh.o.r.e.
"Lose and love" is love"s first art; So it was with thee and me, For I first beheld thy heart On the night I last saw thee.
Pine-woods and mysteries!
Sea-sands and sorrows!
Hearts fluttered by a breeze That bodes dark morrows, morrows,-- Bodes dark morrows!
Moonlight in sweet overflow Poured upon the earth and sea!
Lovelight with intenser glow In the deeps of thee and me!
Clasped hands and silences!
Hearts faint and throbbing!
The weak wind sighing in the trees!
The strong surf sobbing, sobbing,-- The strong surf sobbing!
A HILL SONG.
Hills where once my love and I Let the hours go laughing by!
All your woods and dales are sad,-- You have lost your Oread.
Falling leaves! Silent woodlands!
Half your loveliness is fled.
Golden-rod, wither now!
Winter winds, come hither now!
All the summer joy is dead.
There"s a sense of something gone In the gra.s.s I linger on.
There"s an under-voice that grieves In the rustling of the leaves.
Pine-clad peaks! Rus.h.i.+ng waters!
Glens where we were once so glad!
There"s a light pa.s.sed from you, There"s a joy outcast from you,-- You have lost your Oread.
AT SEA.
As a brave man faces the foe, Alone against hundreds, and sees Death grin in his teeth, But, shutting his lips, fights on to the end Without speech, without hope, without flinching,-- So, silently, grimly, the steamer Lurches ahead through the night.
A beacon-light far off, Twinkling across the waves like a star!
But no star in the dark overhead!
The splash of waters at the prow, and the evil light Of the death-fires flitting like will-o"-the-wisps beneath! And beyond Silence and night!
I sit by the taffrail, Alone in the dark and the blown cold mist and the spray, Feeling myself swept on irresistibly, Sunk in the night and the sea, and made one with their footfall-less onrush, Letting myself be borne like a spar adrift Helplessly into the night.
Without fear, without wish, Insensate save of a dull, crushed ache in my heart, Careless whither the steamer is going, Conscious only as in a dream of the wet and the dark And of a form that looms and fades indistinctly Everywhere out of the night.
O love, how came I here?
Shall I wake at thy side and smile at my dream?
The dream that grips me so hard that I cannot wake nor stir!
O love! O my own love, found but to be lost!
My soul sends over the waters a wild inarticulate cry, Like a gull"s scream heard in the night.
The mist creeps closer. The beacon Vanishes astern. The sea"s monotonous noises Lapse through the drizzle with a listless, subsiding cadence.
And thou, O love, and the sea throb on in my brain together, While the steamer plunges along, b.u.t.ting its way through the night.