Poems 1905-1908

Second Best

Day that I Have Loved

Sleeping Out: Full Moon

In Examination

Pine-Trees and the Sky: Evening

Wagner

The Vision of the Archangels

Seaside

On the Death of Smet-Smet, the Hippopotamus-Goddess

The Song of the Pilgrims

The Song of the Beasts

Failure

Ante Aram

Dawn

The Call

The Wayfarers

The Beginning

 

Seaside

Swiftly out from the friendly lilt of the band,
   The crowd's good laughter, the loved eyes of men,
   I am drawn nightward; I must turn again
Where, down beyond the low untrodden strand,
There curves and glimmers outward to the unknown
   The old unquiet ocean. All the shade
Is rife with magic and movement. I stray alone
   Here on the edge of silence, half afraid,

Waiting a sign. In the deep heart of me
The sullen waters swell towards the moon,
And all my tides set seaward.
                                                From inland
Leaps a gay fragment of some mocking tune,
That tinkles and laughs and fades along the sand,
And dies between the seawall and the sea.