Four Songs for a Medium Voice

The sea is fleck'd with bars of gray,
The dull dead wind is out of tune,
And like a wither'd leaf the moon
Is blown across the stormy bay.

Etched clear upon the pallid sand
The black boat lies: a sailor boy
Clambers aboard in careless joy,
With laughing face and gleaming hand.

And overhead the curlews cry,
Where through the dusky upland grass
The young brown-throated reapers pass,
Like silhouettes against the sky.

The wild bee reels from bough to bough
  With his furry coat and his gauzy wing.
Now in a lily-cup, and now
  Setting a jacinth bell a-swing,
          In his wandering;
Sit closer love: it was here I trow
          I made that vow,
  
Swore that two lives should be like one
  As long as the sea-gull loved the sea,
As long as the sunflower sought the sun, --
  It shall be, I said, for eternity
          'Twixt you and me!
Dear friend, those times are over and done,
          Love's web is spun.
  
Look upward where the poplar trees
  Sway and sway in the summer air,
Here in the valley never a breeze
  Scatters the thistledown, but there
          Great winds blow fair
From the mighty murmuring mystical seas,
          And the wave-lashed leas.
  
Look upward where the white gull screams,
  What does it see that we do not see?
Is that a star? or the lamp that gleams
  On some outward voyaging argosy, --
          Ah! can it be
We have lived our lives in a land of dreams!
          How sad it seems.
  
Sweet, there is nothing left to say
  But this, that love is never lost,
Keen winter stabs the breasts of May
  Whose crimson roses burst his frost,
          Ships tempest-tossed
Will find a harbour in some bay,
          And so we may.
  
And there is nothing left to do
  But to kiss once again, and part,
Nay, there is nothing we should rue,
  I have my beauty, -- you your Art,
          Nay, do not start,
One world was not enough for two
          Like me and you.

I have seen the proudest stars
	That wander on through space,
Even the sun and moon,
	But not your face.

I have heard the violin,
	The winds and waves rejoice
In endless minstrelsy,
	Yet not your voice.

I have touched the trillium,
	Pale flower of the land,
Coral, anemone,
	And not your hand.

I have kissed the shining feet
	Of Twilight, lover-wise,
Opened the gates of Dawn:
	Oh, not your eyes!

I have dremed unwonted things,
	Visions that witches brew;
Spoken with images,
	Never with you.

In from the ocean the whole fog creeps,
Blotting out ship and rock and tree,
While wrapped in its shroud, from the soundless deeps
Back to the land come the lost at sea.

Over the weeping grass they drift
By well-known paths to their homes again,
To finger the latch they may not lift
And peer through the glistering windowpane.

Then in the churchyard each seeks the stone
To its mem’ry raised among the rest,
And they watch by their empty graves alone
Till the fog rolls back to the ocean’s breast.