Song-Surf

But few, how few her worshippers! For we
Cast at a myriad shrines our souls, to rise
Beliefless, unanointed, bound not free,
To sacrificing a vain sacrifice!
Let thy lone innocence then quickly null
Within our veins doubt-led and wrong desire —
Or drugging knowledge that but fills o'erfull
Of feverous mystery the days we drain!
Be thy warm notes like an Orphean lyre
To lead us to life's Arcady again!

AT TINTERN ABBEY

(June, 1903)

O Tintern, Tintern! evermore my dreams
Troubled by thy grave beauty shall be born;
Thy crumbling loveliness and ivy streams
Shall speak to me for ever, from this morn;
The wind-wild daws about thy arches drifting,
Clouds sweeping o'er thy ruin to the sea,
Gray Tintern, all the hills about thee, lifting
Their misty waving woodland verdancy!

The centuries that draw thee to the earth
In envy of thy desolated charm,
The summers and the winters, the sky's girth
Of sunny blue or bleakness, seek thy harm.
But would that I were Time, then only tender
Touch upon thee should fall as on I sped;
Of every pillar would I be defender,
Of every mossy window – of thy dead!

Thy dead beneath obliterated stones
Upon the sod that is at last thy floor,
Who list the Wye not as it lonely moans
Nor heed thy Gothic shadows grieving o'er.
O Tintern, Tintern! trysting-place, where never
Are wanting mysteries that move the breast,
I'll hear thy beauty calling, ah, for ever —
Till sinks within me the last voice to rest!

OH, GO NOT OUT

Oh, go not out upon the storm,
Go not, my sweet, to Swalchie pool!
A witch tho' she be dead may charm
Thee and befool.

A wild night 'tis! her lover's moan,
Down under ooze and salty weed,
She'll make thee hear – and then her own!
Till thou shalt heed.

And it will suck upon thy heart —
The sorcery within her cry —
Till madness out of thee upstart,
And rage to die.

For him she loved, she laughed to death!
And as afloat his chill hand lay,
"Ha, ha! to hell I sent his wraith!"
Did she not say?

And from his finger strive to draw
The ring that bound him to her spell?
Till on her closed his hand whose awe
No curse could quell?

Oh, yea! and tho' she struggled pale,
Did it not hold her cold and fast,
Till crawled the tide o'er rock and swale,
To her at last?

Down in the pool where she was swept
He holds her – Oh, go not a-near!
For none has heard her cry but wept
And died that year.

HUMAN LOVE

We, spoke of God and Fate,
And of that Life – which some await —
Beyond the grave,
"It will be fair," she said,
"But love is here!
I only crave thy breast
Not God's when I am dead.
For He nor wants nor needs
My little love.
But it may be, if I love thee
And those whose sorrow daily bleeds,
He knows – and somehow heeds!"

ASHORE

What are the heaths and hills to me?
I'm a-longing for the sea!
What are the flowers that dapple the dell,