from the struggling sea,
A cry where the ghastly surf to the moon-dawn rolled;
"Burn, oh burn; for my love is coming to me,
His hands will be scarred with the ropes and starved with the cold."

A strangled cry where the foam in the moonlight rolled,
A bitter cry from the heart of the ghastly sea;
"His hands will be frozen, the night is dark and cold,
Burn, oh burn, for my love is coming to me."

One cry to God from the soul of the shuddering sea,
One moment of stifling lips and struggling hands;
"Burn, oh burn; for my love is coming to me;
And oh, I think the little one understands."

One moment of stifling lips and struggling hands,
Then only the glitter and gloom of the angry deep;
"And oh, I think the little one understands;
Dreamikin, Drowsy-head, sleep, my little one, sleep."

EARTH-BOUND

Ghosts? Love would fain believe,
Earth being so fair, the dead might wish to return!
Is it so strange if, even in heaven, they yearn
For the May-time and the dreams it used to give?

Through dark abysms of Space,
From strange new spheres where Death has called them now
May they not, with a crown on every brow,
Still cry to the loved earth's lost familiar face?

We two, love, we should come
Seeking a little refuge from the light
Of the blinding terrible star-sown Infinite,
Seeking some sheltering roof, some four-walled home,

From that too high, too wide
Communion with the universe and God,
How glad to creep back to some lane we trod
Hemmed in with a hawthorn hedge on either side.

Fresh from death's boundless birth,
How fond the circled vision of the sea
Would seem to souls tired of Infinity,
How kind the soft blue boundaries of earth,

How rich the nodding spray
Of pale green leaves that made the sapphire deep
A background to the dreams of that brief sleep
We called our life when heaven was far away.

How strange would be the sight
Of the little towns and twisted streets again,
Where all the hurrying works and ways of men
Would seem a children's game for our delight.

What boundless heaven could give
This joy in the strait austere restraints of earth,
Whereof the dead have felt the immortal dearth
Who look upon God's face and cannot live?

Our ghosts would clut