are swift to enchant and tire
Time's will!
Our feet are wiser than all desire,
Our song is better than faith or fame;
To whom it is given no ill e'er came,
Who has it not grows chill!
Who has it not grows laggard and lame,
Nor knows that the world is a Minstrel's lyre,
Smitten and never still!..._

Last night on the currents of God.

THE SONG OF THE HOMESICK GAEL

(_In the characteristic minor of a recent literary movement_)

I long to see the solan-goose
Wing over Ailsa crag
At dusk again--or Girvan gulls at dawn;
To see the osprey grayly glide
The winds of Kamasaig:
For grayness now my heart is set upon.

The grayness of sea-spaces where
There's loneliness alone,
Save for the wings that sweep it with unrest,
Save for the hunger-cries that sound
And die into a moan,
Save for the moaning hunger in my breast.

For grayness is the hue of all
In life that is not lies.
A thousand years of tears are in my heart;
And only in their mystery
Can I be truly wise:
From light and laughter follies only start.

I long to see the mists again
Above the tumbling tide
Of Ailsa, at the coming of the night.
There's weariness and emptiness
And soul unsatisfied
Forever in the places of delight.

PAGEANTS OF THE SEA

What memories have I of it,
The sea, continent-clasping,
The sea whose spirit is a sorcery,
The sea whose magic foaming is immortal!
What memories have I of it thro the years!

What memories of its shores!...
Of shadowy headlands doomed to stay the storm;
And red cliffs clawing ever into the tides;
Of misty moors whose royal heather purples;
Of channeled marshes, village-nesting hills;
Of crags wind-eaten, homes of hungry gulls;
Of bays--
Where sails float furled, resting softly at harbour,
Until, winging again, they sweep away.

What memories have I, too,
Of faring out at dawn upon tameless waters,
Upon the infinite wasted yearning of them,
While winds, the mystic harp-strings of the world,
Were sounding sweet farewells;
While coast and lighthouse tower were fading fast,
And from me all the world slipped like a garment.

What memories of mid-deeps!...
Of heaving on thro haunted vasts of foam,
Thro swaying terrors of tormented tides;