The South Seas

Mutability

Clouds

Sonnet (Suggested by some of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research

A Memory (From a sonnet-sequence)

One Day

Waikiki

Hauntings

He Wonders Whether to Praise or to Blame Her

Doubts

There's Wisdom in Women

Fafaia

Heaven

The Great Lover

Retrospect

Tiare Tahiti

 

Waikiki

Warm perfumes like a breath from vine and tree
   Drift down the darkness. Plangent, hidden from eyes
   Somewhere an eukaleli thrills and cries
And stabs with pain the night's brown savagery.
And dark scents whisper; and dim waves creep to me,
   Gleam like a woman's hair, stretch out, and rise;
   And new stars burn into the ancient skies,
Over the murmurous soft Hawaian sea.

And I recall, lose, grasp, forget again,
   And still remember, a tale I have heard, or known,
An empty tale, of idleness and pain,
   Of two that loved -- or did not love -- and one
Whose perplexed heart did evil, foolishly,
A long while since, and by some other sea.

Waikiki, 1913.