ing of men, and crying!
With their continents--cradles of grief and despair!
Better entombing waters for them, better our deeps unfathomed,
Where birth is soulless, life goalless, death toll-less for all,
And where dark ooze enshrouds past resurrection!"

Ah, yes, I know your heart!
I have heard it raving at coast-lights set to reveal you,
I have watched it foam at ships that sought to defy you,
I have seen it straining at cables that cross you, bearing whispers hid to you,
Or heaving at waves of the air that tell your hurricanes.

I know, I know your heart!
Men you will sink, and shores will sink; but a shore shall be man's forever,
From whence his lighthouse soul shall signal the Infinite,
Whose fleets go by, star after star, bearing their unknown burden
To a Port which only eternity shall determine!

A SEA-GHOST

Oh, fisher-fleet, go in from the sea
And furl your wings.
The bay is gray with the twilit spray
And the loud surf springs.

The chill buoy-bell is rung by the hands
Of all the drowned,
Who know the woe of the wind and tow
Of the tides around.

Go in, go in! Oh, haste from the sea,
And let them rest--
The throng who long for the air--still long,
But are still unblest.

Aye, even as I, whose hands at the bell
Now labour most.
The tomb has gloom, but oh, the doom
Of the drear sea-ghost!

He evermore must wander the ooze
Beneath the wave,
Forlorn--to warn of the tempest born,
And to save--to save!

Then go, go in! and leave us the sea,
For only so
Can peace release us and give us ease
Of our salty woe.

FINITUDE

I

One ruby, amid a diamond spray of stars,
The coast light flashes;
The tide plashes,
Across a mile of bay-sweet land the moon
Comes soon:
She has lost half of her lustre and looks old.

A cricket, finitude's incarnate cry,
And the infinite waters with their hushless sigh
Are the two sounds
The night has:
Each in eternal wistfulness abounds.

II

I have wakened out of my sleep because I too
Am wistful,
Tristeful;
Because I know that half of _me_ is gone,
And that all frailty cries in the cricket's tone.

I have wakened out of my sleep to watch and listen.
For what?
To see for a moment unive