Bliss Carman

“ Off the freshening sea to windward,
Is it a white tern I hear
Shrilling in the gusty weather
Where the far sea-line is clear?
[Pg 100]
What a morning for departure!
How your blue eyes melt and shine!
Will you watch us from the headland
Till we sink below the line?
I can see the wind already
Steer the scurf marks of the tide,
As we slip the wake of being
Down the sloping world and wide.
I can feel the vasty mountains
Heave and settle under me,
And the Doomkeel veer and shudder,
Crumbling on the hollow sea. ”

“ The borders of that country are slumberous and wide;
And they are well who marry the fondlers of the tide.
Within their arms immortal, no mortal fear can be;
But Malyn of the mountains is fairer than the sea. ”

“ And through the boding twilight are blown the shrilling tern.
The light is on the headland, the harbor gate is wide;
But rolling in with ruin the fog is on the tide.
Fate like a muffled steersman sails with that Norland gloom;
The Snowflake in the offing is neck and neck with doom.
Ha, ha, my saucy cruiser, crowd up your helm and run!
There'll be a merrymaking to-morrow in the sun.
A cloud of straining canvas, a roar of breaking foam,
[Pg 35]
The Snowflake and the sea-drift are racing in for home. ”

“ Amid the awful sobbing and quailing of the sea.
They sheet the flying schooner in foam from stem to stern,
Till every yard of canvas is drenched from clew to ear'n'.
And where they move uneasy, chill is the light and pale;
They are the Skipper's daughters, who dance before the gale.
They revel with the Snowflake, and down the close of day
Among the boisterous dancers she holds her dancing way;
And then the dark has kindled the harbor light alee,
With stars and wind and sea-room upon the gurly sea.
[Pg 33]
The storm gets up to windward to heave and clang and brawl ”

“ Down the bournless slopes of sea-room,
With the long gray wake behind,
I have sailed my cruiser steady
With no pilot but the wind.
[Pg 111]
Battling with relentless pirates
From the lower seas of Doom,
I have kept the colors flying
Through the roar of drift and gloom.
Scudding where the shadow foemen
Hang about us grim and stark,
Broken spars and shredded canvas,
We are racing for the dark.
Sped and blown abaft the sunset
Like a shriek the storm has caught ”

“ Surely her eyes have sighted his schooner in the lift!
But the great tide he homes on sets with an outward drift.
So will-o'-the-wisp deludes her till dawn, and she turns home
In unperturbed assurance, "To-morrow he will come."
This is the tale of Malyn, whom sudden grief so marred.
And still each lovely summer resumes that sweet regard,—
The old unvexed eternal indifference to pain;
The sea sings in the marshes, and June comes back again.
[Pg 42]
All night the lapsing rivers lisp in the long dike grass,
And many memories whisper the sea-winds as they pass;
The tides disturb the silence ”

“ Of the thunder of the foam;
[Pg 115]
For the grass is full of slumber
In the twilight world for me,
And my tired hands are slackened
From their toiling on the sea.
[Pg 116]
OUTBOUND
A lonely sail in the vast sea-room,
I have put out for the port of gloom.
The voyage is far on the trackless tide,
The watch is long, and the seas are wide.
The headlands blue in the sinking day
Kiss me a hand on the outward way.
The fading gulls, as they dip and veer,
Lift me a voice that is good to hear.
The great winds come, and the heaving sea,
The restless mother, is calling me. ”

“ As though the sea were mourning above an ancient grief.
For once the restless Mother of all the weary lands
Went down to him in beauty, with trouble in her hands,
And gave to him forever all memory to keep,
But to her wayward children oblivion and sleep,
That no immortal burden might plague one living thing,
But death should sweetly visit us vagabonds of spring.
And so his heart forever goes inland with the tide,
Searching with many voices among the marshes wide.
Under the quiet starlight, up through the stirring reeds,
[Pg 40]
With whispering and lamenting it rises and recedes. ”

“ While round the hole of one is a rune,
Black in the wash of the bleaching noon.
[Pg 70]
"Ride, for the wind is awake and away.
Sleep, for the harvest grain is gray."
No word more. And many a mile,
A ghostly bivouac rank and file,
They sleep to-day on the marshes wide;
Some far night they will wake and ride.
Once they were riders hot with speed,
"Kelpie, Kelpie, gallop at need!"
With hills of the barren sea to roam,
Housing their horses on the foam. ”

“ Dancing for her. For Malyn is only seventeen.
Out there beyond her window, from frosty deep to deep,
Her heart is dancing with them until she falls asleep.
Then all night long through heaven, with stately to and fro,
To music of no measure, the gorgeous dancers go.
[Pg 28]
The stars are great and splendid, beryl and gold and blue,
And there are dreams for Malyn that never will come true.
Yet for one golden Yule-tide their royal guest is she,
Among the wintry mountains beside the Northern sea. ”

“ A moment Malyn's window is gleaming in the lee,
And then—the ghost of wreckage upon the iron sea.
Ah, Malyn, lay your forehead upon your folded arm,
And hear the grim marauder shake out the reefs of storm!
Loud laughs the surly Skipper to feel the fog drive in,
Because a blue-eyed sailor shall wed his kith and kin,
And the red dawn discover a rover spent for breath
Among the merrymakers who fondle him to death.
And all the snowy sisters are dancing wild and grand,
For him whose broken beauty shall slacken to their hand.
[Pg 36]
They wanton in their triumph, and skirl at Malyn's plight ”

“ Where the dancing breakers are,
Presently she veers and races
In across the roaring bar,—
Rounds and luffs and comes to anchor,
While the wharf begins to throng.
Silence falls upon the women.
And misgiving stirs the strong. ”

“ And the climbing foam receives it
To its everlasting place.
What does Arnold, Master, think you?
Whimper like a child for dread?
That's not Arnold. Foulest weather
Strongest sailors ever bred.
And this slip of taut sea-faring
Grows a man who throttles fear.
Let the storm and dark in spite now
Do their worst with valor here!
[Pg 52]
Not a reef and not a shiver,
While the wind jeers in her shrouds,
And the flauts of foam and sea-fog
Swarm upon her deck in crowds,
Flies the Scud like a mad racer ”

“ The little hills hearken, hearken, the great hills hear and dream.
And Malyn keeps the marshes all the sweet summer night,
Alone, foot-free, to follow a wandering wisp-light.
For every day at sundown, at the first beacon's gleam,
She calls the gulls her brothers and keeps a tryst with them.
"O gulls, white gulls, what see you beyond the sloping blue?
And where away's the Snowflake, she's so long overdue?"
Then, as the gloaming settles, the hilltop stars emerge
And watch that plaintive figure patrol the dark sea verge.
[Pg 41]
She follows the marsh fire ”