ar
Thy memory as a golden amulet
Upon my breast, to sing a chansonnette
Of winter tones, when summer time is here.

And yet, my heart arises from the dark,
Where it fell back in silence when you went
To seaward, and a sprite malevolent
Sat laughing in the white sails of thy barque.

'Twas not moth-wings dashing against the flame,
Burning in love's areanum; 'twas a cry
Struck from soul-crossing chords, that, separate, frame

Life's holy calm, or wasting agony.
But now between the warring strings there grows
A space of peace, as 'tween truce-honoured foes.

THE THOUSAND THINGS

Here one by one come back the thousand things
Which made divinely sweet our intercourse;
Love summons them here straightway to divorce
The heart from melancholy wanderings.

"Here laid she her white hand upon my arm;
To this place came she with slow-gliding grace;
Here smiled she up serenely in my face;
And these sweet notes she sang me for a charm."

I treasure up her words, and say them o'er
With close-shut eyes; with her again I float
Upon the Loire; I see the gems she wore,

The ruby shining at her queenly throat;
I climb with her again the Pyrenees,
And hear her laughter ringing through the trees.

THE SEA

I in my childhood never saw the sea
Save in my dreams. There it was vast and lone,
Splendid in power, breaking against the stone
Walls of the world in thunder symphony.

From it arose mists growing into mists
Making a cool white curtain for the sun,
And melting mornward when the day was done,
A moving sphere where spirits kept their trysts.

A ceaseless swinging with the swinging earth,
A never-tiring ebbing to and fro,
Trenching eternal fastnesses; a girth

Round mountains in their everlasting snow.
It was a vast emotion, fibre-drawn
From all the elements since the first dawn.

THE CHART

Then came in further years the virgin sight
Of the live sea; the sea that marches down,
With sunny phalanxes and flags of foam,
To match its puissance