Glowed red against a gleam of broom;

While earth its scented secrets told,

There, silent, sunset-aureoled,

Sat Ioläus, mild and old.

In distance large the moving ships

Sailed on into the evening skies.

He gazed, and saw not. In eclipse

He tensely sat, like one who grips

Some semblance that his dream descries,

With such a look of far surprise

That half-uncanny seemed the man,

So warped with age, so weirdly wan:

He had such ghostly eyes.

Then half to self, and half to me,

Aloof in passion and lone despair,

He spoke like one whose secrets flee

From silence unaware:

Now plaintively from a grief gone blind,

Heavy with cumbering care,

Now, thrilling thought like a white sea-wind,

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