SONG OF THE SEA

FLOW, Waters! spread afar my zones of green, So I with salt baptismal waves may haunt And bathe the new-sprung continents terrene, Hearing my freshets and young rivers chaunt. O white-armed children of mine elder waves, Behold what golden lands lie in your sight! Bellow! you molten thunders, in my caves, You whales, gush forth your fountains of delight! Dance, merfolk and mad dolphins, dance the Seas,--  My watery palace-halls are deep and wide, And Earth hath quaffed mine emerald wine whose lees Shall make her shores teem fertile. O'er my tide, The ermine of my surges and the flags And mews lie dense, and pearls sleep in my breast. The coral burns upon my darkest crags, And the slow, mountant atoll knows no rest. My leman fair, the charmed Moon, bends low To draw me with her webs of mute desire, And lo! beyond her magic empires glow Pale fires of sunrise and red sunset fire!

 

 

 

 

SONG OF EARTH THE ELEMENT

Earth, the Element, mute, impassive, primal, lies shaped to valley, plain and peak. Enwombed in her, the ancient vast fertility lives on.

Her veins are charged with promise and birth, exhaustless quickenings of her eager flesh. She drinks from rocky bowls where lakes lie spread, from twining rivers and living streams.

She pours her virgin vigour through fields no plow has riven. In darkness granite-ribbed, she prisons her mineral hoards.

She lies as a garment upon the Mother-sphere; her feet trespass on Ocean.

Her heart is fretted with Fire, her flanks by the Seas, her brows by Sun and Wind.

In patience and sweet sufferance she lies, substance, nurse and genetrix of Life.

Her Song is heard, a mutter of music, low yet coalescent in slow estrangement from her lips.

I WAKE again!--O dauntless peaks that stand, Watch-towers to all the Heavens--O vales that lie,-- See where I rise or stretch, the lusty land Checks Seas and winnows Winds and frets the sky. Deep in my 

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