From the Sea

ALL beauty calls you to me, and you seem,

Past twice a thousand miles of shifting sea,

To reach me. You are as the wind I breathe

Here on the ship's sun-smitten topmost deck,

With only light between the heavens and me.

I feel your spirit and I close my eyes,

Knowing the bright hair blowing in the sun,

The eager whisper and the searching eyes.

Listen, I love you. Do not turn your face

Nor touch me. Only stand and watch awhile

The blue unbroken circle of the sea.

Look far away and let me ease my heart

Of words that beat in it with broken wing.

Look far away, and if I say too much,

Forget that I am speaking. Only watch,

How like a gull that sparkling sinks to rest,

The foam-crest drifts along a happy wave

Toward the bright verge, the boundary of the world.

I am so weak a thing, praise me for this,

That in some strange way I was strong enough

To keep my love unuttered and to stand

Altho' I longed to kneel to you that night

You looked at me with ever-calling eyes.

Was I not calm? And if you guessed my love

You thought it something delicate and free,

Soft as the sound of fir-trees in the wind,

Fleeting as phosphorescent stars in foam.

Yet in my heart there was a beating storm

Bending my thoughts before it, and I strove

To say too little lest I say too much,

And from my eyes to drive love's happy shame.

Yet when I heard your name the first far time

It seemed like other names to me, and I

Was all unconscious, as a dreaming river

That nears at last its long predestined sea;

And when you spoke to me, I did not know

That to my life's high altar came its priest.

But now I know between my God and me

You stand forever, nearer God than I,

And in your hands with faith and utter joy

I would that I could lay my woman's soul.

Oh, my love

To whom I cannot come with any gift

Of body or of soul, I pass and go.

But sometimes when you hear blown back to you

My wistful, far-off singing touched with tears,

Know that I sang for you alone to hear,

And that I wondered if the wind would bring

To him who tuned my heart its distant song.

So might a woman who in loneliness

Had borne a child, dreaming of days to come,

Wonder if it would please its father's eyes.

But long before I ever heard your name,

Always the undertone's unchanging note

In all my singing had prefigured you,

Foretold you as a spark foretells a flame.

Yet I was free as an untethered cloud

In the great space between the sky and sea,

And might have blown before the wind of joy

Like a bright banner woven by the sun.

I did not know the longing in the night--

You who have waked me cannot give me sleep.

All things in all the world can rest, but I,

Even the smooth brief respite of a wave

When it gives up its broken crown of foam,

Even that little rest I may not have.

And yet all quiet loves of friends, all joy

In all the piercing beauty of the world

I would give up--go blind forevermore,

Rather than have God blot from out my soul

Remembrance of your voice that said my name.

For us no starlight stilled the April fields,

No birds awoke in darkling trees for us,

Yet where we walked the city's street that night

Felt in our feet the singing fire of spring,

And in our path we left a trail of light

Soft as the phosphorescence of the sea

When night submerges in the vessel's wake

A heaven of unborn evanescent stars.

Vignettes Overseas

     I

Off Gibraltar

BEYOND the sleepy hills of Spain,

The sun goes down in yellow mist,

The sky is fresh with dewy stars

Above a sea of amethyst.

Yet in the city of my love

High noon burns all the heavens bare--

For him the happiness of light,

For me a delicate despair.

     II

Off Algiers

Oh give me neither love nor tears,

Nor dreams that sear the night with fire,

Go lightly on your pilgrimage

Unburdened by desire.

Forget me for a month, a year,

But, oh, beloved, think of me

When unexpected beauty burns

Like sudden sunlight on the sea.

     III

Naples

Nisida and Prosida are laughing in the light,

Capri is a dewy flower lifting into sight,

Posilipo kneels and looks in the burnished sea,

Naples crowds her million roofs close as close can be;

Round about the mountain's crest a flag of smoke is hung--

Oh when God made Italy he was gay and young!

     IV

Capri

When beauty grows too great to bear

How shall I ease me of its ache,

For beauty more than bitterness

Makes the heart break.

Now while I watch the dreaming sea

With isles like flowers against her breast,

Only one voice in all the world

Could give me rest.

     V

Night Song at Amalfi

I asked the heaven of stars

What I should give my love--

It answered me with silence,

Silence above.

I asked the darkened sea

Down where the fishers go--

It answered me with silence,

Silence below.

Oh, I could give him weeping,

Or I could give him song--

But how can I give silence

My whole life long?

     VI

Ruins of Paestum

On lowlands where the temples lie

The marsh-grass mingles with the flowers,

Only the little songs of birds

Link the unbroken hours.

So in the end, above my heart

Once like the city wild and gay,

The slow white stars will pass by night,

The swift brown birds by day.

     VII

Rome

Oh for the rising moon

Over the roofs of Rome,

And swallows in the dusk

Circling a darkened dome!

Oh for the measured dawns

That pass with folded wings--

How can I let them go

With unremembered things?

     VIII

Florence

The bells ring over the Anno,

Midnight, the long, long chime;

Here in the quivering darkness

I am afraid of time.

Oh, gray bells cease your tolling,

Time takes too much from me,

And yet to rock and river

He gives eternity.

     IX

Villa Serbelloni, Bellaggio

The fountain shivers lightly in the rain,

The laurels drip, the fading roses fall,

The marble satyr plays a mournful strain

That leaves the rainy fragrance musical.

Oh dripping laurel, Phoebus sacred tree,

Would that swift Daphne's lot might come to me,

Then would I still my soul and for an hour

Change to a laurel in the glancing shower.

     X

Stresa

The moon grows out of the hills

A yellow flower,

The lake is a dreamy bride

Who waits her hour.

Beauty has filled my heart,

It can hold no more,

It is full, as the lake is full,

From shore to shore.

     XI

Hamburg

The day that I come home,

What will you find to say,--

Words as light as foam

With laughter light as spray?

Yet say what words you will

The day that I come home;

I shall hear the whole deep ocean

Beating under the foam.