Softly the stealthy night descends, The black sails fade into the sky: Is this not, where the sea-line ends, The shore-line of infinity?

I cannot think or dream: the grey Unending waste of sea and night, Dull, impotently infinite, Blots out the very hope of day. 

 

RAIN ON THE DOWN.

NIGHT, and the down by the sea, And the veil of rain on the down; And she came through the mist and the rain to me From the safe warm lights of the town.

The rain shone in her hair, And her face gleamed in the rain; And only the night and the rain were there As she came to me out of the rain.

 

BEFORE THE SQUALL.

THE wind is rising on the sea, White flashes dance along the deep, That moans as if uneasily It turned in an unquiet sleep.

Ridge after rocky ridge upheaves A toppling crest that falls in spray Where the tormented beach receives The buffets of the sea’s wild play.

On the horizon’s nearing line, Where the sky rests, a visible wall. Grey in the offing, I divine The sails that fly before the squall.

 

UNDER THE CLIFFS.

BRIGHT light to windward on the horizon’s verge; To leeward, stormy shadows, violet-black, And the wide sea between A vast unfurrowed field of windless green; The stormy shadows flicker on the track Of phantom sails that vanish and emerge.

I gaze across the sea, remembering her. I watch the white sun walk across the sea, This pallid afternoon, With feet that tread as whitely as the moon, And in his fleet and shining feet I see The footsteps of another voyager.

 

REQUIES.

O IS it death or life That sounds like something strangely known In this subsiding out of strife, This slow sea-monotone?

A sound, scarce heard through sleep, Murmurous as the August bees That fill the forest hollows deep About the roots of trees.

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