Sea Poems Part 14

Out by the valiant Light, Out by rocks where the young gulls lay-- And glad winds teach them flight!

Out of the Harbour! out of the Bay!

Out to the open sea!

O there's not in the world a way To feel so wildly free!

So, let her quiver! So, let her leap!

So, let her dance the foam!

All life else is a narrow keep, The sea alone is home!

GIVE OVER, O SEA!

Give over, O sea! You never shall reach Nirvana!

Your tides, like the tidal generations, ever shall rise and fall, And your infinite waves find birth, rebirth, and billowy dissolution.

The years of your existence are unending.

The years of your unresting are forever.

The sun, who is desire, ever begets in you his pa.s.sion, And the moon is ever drawing you, with silvery soft alluring, To surge and sway, to wander and fret, to waste yourself in foam.

So Buddha-calm shall never descend upon you.

And tho it may often seem you have found the Way, Your tempest-sins return and quicken to wild reincarnations, And again great life, pulsing and perilous, Omnipotent life, that ever resurges thro the universe, Lashes you back to striving, back to yearning, back to speech.

To utterance on all sh.o.r.es of the world Of things unutterable.

Give over then, you never shall reach Nirvana!

Nor I, who am your acolyte for a moment; Who swing a censer of fragrant words before your priestly feet, That tread these altar-rocks, bedraped with weeds gently afloat, And with the wild flutter of gulls wildly mysterious.

Give over and call your winds again to join you!

O chanter of deep enchantments, of uncharted litanies, Call them and bid them say with you that life transcends retreat, And that, in the temple of its Immanence, There is no peace that does not spring daily from peacelessness, And no Nirvana save in the lee of storm.

THE NUN

A lone palm leans in the moonlight, Over a convent wall.

The sea below is waking and breaking With a calm heave and fall.

A young nun sits at a window; For Heaven she is too fair; Yet even the dove of G.o.d might nest In her bosom beating there.

A lone s.h.i.+p sails from the harbour: Whom does it bear away?

Her lover who, sin-hearted, has parted And left her but to pray?

She has no lover, nor ever Has heard afar love's sigh.

Only the Convent's vesper vow Has ever dimmed her eye.

For naught knows she of her beauty, More than the palm of its peace: And none shall cross her portal, to mortal Desires to bend her knees.

The ways of the world have flowers, And any who will pluck those; But in His hand, against all harm, G.o.d still will keep some rose.

LAST SIGHT OF LAND

The clouds in woe hang far and dim; I look again, and lo, Only a faint and shadow line Of sh.o.r.e--I watch it go.

The gulls have left the s.h.i.+p and wheel Back to the cliff's gray wraith.

Will it be so of all our thoughts When we set sail on Death?

And what will the last sight be of life As lone we fare and fast?

Grief and a face we love in mist-- Then night and awe too vast?

Or the dear light of Hope--like that, Oh, see, from the lost sh.o.r.e Kindling and calling "Onward, you Shall reach the Evermore!"

THE END