l sails set.
The tide rolls in a restive gray,
The wind blows wet.
The gull is weary of his wings,
And I am weary of all things.

Heavy upon me longing lies,
My sad eyes gaze
Across sad leagues that sink and rise
And sink always.
My life has sunk and risen so,
I'd have it cease awhile to flow.

WAVES

The evening sails come home
With twilight in their wings.
The harbour-light across the gloam
Springs;
The wind sings.

The waves begin to tell
The sea's night-sorrow o'er,
Weaving within their ancient spell
More
Than earth's lore.

The rising moon wafts strange
Low lures across the tide,
On which my dim thoughts seem to range,
Stride
Upon stride,

Until, with flooding thrill,
They seem at last to blend
With waves that from the Eternal Will
Wend,
Without end.

IN A STORM

(_To a Petrel_)

All day long in the spindrift swinging,
Bird of the sea! bird of the sea!
How I would that I had thy winging--
How I envy thee!

How I would that I had thy spirit,
So to careen, joyous to cry,
Over the storm and never fear it!
Into the night that hovers near it!
Calm on a reeling sky!

All day long, and the night, unresting!
Ah! I believe thy every breath
Means that life's best comes ever breasting
Peril and pain and death!

AFTER THEIR PARTING

(_A Woman Speaks_)

You know that rock on a rocky coast,
Where the moon came up, a ruined ghost,
Distorted until her shape almost
Seemed breaking?
Came up like a phantom silently
And dropped her shroud on the red night sea,
Then walked, a spectral mystery,
Unwaking?

You know how, sudden, there came a change,
When she had left the sea's low range,
Its lurid crimson, stark and strange,
Behind her?
How, sudden, her silver self shone thro,
Tranquilly free of the earth's stained hue,
And found a way where the clouds were few
To bind her?

You know this? Then go back some day,
When I have gone the moonless way,
To that dark rock whereon we lay
And waited;
And when the moon has arisen free,
Your soiling doubt shall fall from me,
And eased of unrest your heart shall be,
And sated.