From The Lips of the Sea by Clinton Scollard (e book reader online .txt) 📕

/> Furrowing the untracked main?
Lord, in their dire need of Thee,
Pity Thou the souls at sea!

Although riven be the rail,
Snapped the shroud and rent the mast,
May they into harbor sail,
All their perils overpast!
Lord, in Thy compassion, be
Pilot to the souls at sea!


WILD GEESE


Along the ocean's shingly edge,
Athwart the turquoise sweep of sky,
The wild geese in a winged wedge
Go darkling by.

From far lagoons be-plumed with palm,
By cove and cape, by bluff and bay,
Through depths of storm, through vasts of calm,
They speed their way.

The pharos flashes on their flight;
They do not heed its beckoning beam;
The great North, stretching weird and white,
Lures like a dream;

Lures, and they answer to the call;
Charms, and they yield them to the spell,
Moved ever by a subtle thrall
Inscrutable.

Do you not feel it, comrade, too,
The inescapable delight,
The mounting rapture, that bids you
Take vernal flight?


A SEA CHANGE


Night-long I heard the poignant undertone,
The interminable sobbing of the sea;
And now that morn breaks dim and dolorously
I mark the riotous surges landward blown,
Tempestuous and towering, and hurled prone
Upon the stark sand reaches; and the glee
Of the mad wind, its maniac monody,
Mingles with ocean's dithyrambic moan.

Not so yestreen, when westward flamed the sun,
Flinging athwart the waves a lustrous path,
Tinging the sky with colors rich and strange!
The black night wrought this mystery of wrath,
This mood demonic (reason seems there none),
This weird and inexplicable sea change!


SAINT SEPULCHRE'S BESIDE THE SEA


The new moon marked the twilight hour,
A night-jar quavered eerily,
And swallows circled round the tower -
Saint Sepulchre's beside the sea.

The ivy clung, the ivy climbed,
The wilding rose twined tenderly,
And Time, the overlord, sublimed
Saint Sepulchre's beside the sea.

Below, the surge, the solemn surge,
Murmured and moaned unceasingly,
For all its golden past a dirge -
Saint Sepulchre's beside the sea.

And love and hate were here as one;
Life blent with death harmoniously;
'Twas beauty in oblivion -
Saint Sepulchre's beside the sea!


SEA LYRICS

I


We heard the breakers clash and boom;
We saw them plunge and writhe and rise,
And toss great flakes of ashen spume
High toward the ashen skies.

Out of the welter of the east
One gaunt barque like a spectre bore;
The mad wind trumpeted, then ceased,
Then trumpeted once more.

A mist crept landward, the spent wraith
Of tempests raging far a-lee;
Then day died like an outworn faith,
And night fell on the sea.


II


O'erhead, the iridescence of the stars,
Ray blending softly with refulgent ray;
Below, above the harbor's hidden bars,
The crumbling iridescence of the spray.

Before, a beacon flashing level lines,
Seemingly poised upon the far sea-verge;
Behind, the night wind in the oaks and pines,
Crooning in answer to the crooning surge.


DAWN, THE HARVESTER


The purple sky has blanched to blue
With freaks and streaks of rose and fawn,
While on the rolling meads of sea
Gleam the gold footsteps of the Dawn.

What harvest, think you, will he find
Whither he sets his feet to roam?
Upon that boundless beryl plain
Only the lilies of the foam!


THE LILAC SEA


A cool wind took me by the hand
And led me on beguilingly,
Until before me, broad and bland,
Shimmered the lilac sea.

Great gulls, with mauve upon their wings,
And cries that lingered hauntingly,
Hovered, with graceful flutterings,
Above the lilac sea.

The curving shore-line had the gleam
Of amethyst; it seemed to me
The ships were all like ships of dream
Upon the lilac sea.

And naught was real, or near or far,
And yet I have the memory
Of twilight, and the vesper star,
Hung o'er the lilac sea.


A SAILOR AMID THE HILLS


What does he hear in dreams? The surging wind,
Its long-drawn cadence, its wild harmony,
A mighty harp of infinite strings designed,
Whose sound to him seems sweet immeasurably?
Nay, nay, but through the spaces of his mind,
Plangent or pleading, loud or low-defined,
The ever-haunting murmur of the sea!


SUMMER BY THE SEA


This is a song of summer by the sea,
Of surge-profundos chanted o'er and o'er;
Of ancient wrath and immemorial glee,
And of the ships that sailed and come no more.

This is a song of summer by the sea,
Of half-forgotten runes made long ago,
Of moon-wrought marvel and of mystery,
Of glamor - of the glow and after-glow.

This is a song of summer by the sea,
Of subtleties of change, of strange unrest;
Of dreams unfathomable that form and flee
Like drifts of mist above the ocean's breast.


DUSK AT SEA


Dusk, like a moth of violet wing, descends
Upon the beryl bosom of the sea,
And in the sky's serene immensity,
Where the impalpable rose of sunset blends
With pearl and purple, shine the sailor's friends,
God's blessed beacons twinkling timorously,
Then brighter, each in its divine degree,
To where the enrapt range of vision ends.

When dusk droops dark o'er life's uncertain seas,
Closing our day, deep-shadowing the sun,
And we go forth across death's pathless foam,
May we have stars more stedfast e'en than these, -
Burning above, for us to gaze upon,
Both light and guide on the long journey home.


THE SPEECH OF THE SEA


All yesterday the sea was sapphire fair,
And the waves told, with little rippling glees,
Of ships that sailed, and then returned to bear
Their golden argosies.

But ah, to-day the sea is ashen gray,
And ceaselessly has sobbed unto the shore
Of those ill-fated barques that sailed away
And came again no more!


NIGHT BY THE SEA


I woke in the black watches of the night
And heard the low intoning of the main,
A muffled heart-beat, an unceasing strain
Of music keyed to dolor and delight.
Now sorrow seemed ascendent, now the height
Of rapture beat in the sublime refrain,
Until the whole world's happiness and pain
Had echoed utterance while the dark took flight.

Then in the sound of that reiterant surge
I marked my own life's flux of bliss and woe -
Grief's long drawn sigh and joy's exultant call;
Till borne by dreams beyond the vast sea verge
I touched those shores the blest immortals know
Where youth and love have triumph over all.


AUTUMN BY THE SEA


Still on the sand and shingle gleams the sun;
Still an unclouded heaven arches o'er;
And still the languid billows roll and run
Down all the lengths of shore.

Still there are hints of summer in the air,
A sense of restfulness, of rapt repose;
And from remote sea gardens, lush and fair,
Rich attars like the rose.

Still a soft haze of delicate hyacinth
Broods o'er the sky-line, floating faint and far;
Still on the edge of night's vast labyrinth
Shines the clear vesper-star.

Soon, all too soon, the spindrift and the spume,
The legions of the surge that fleetly form;
The gray, illimitable wastes of gloom -
The thunderous caves of storm!


MIST AT SEA


The sea was mist-enwreathed at morn,
A void unspeakably forlorn;
Yet from the seeming barren gloom
Beauty, the dream of the world, was born.

A sudden wafture of wind breath,
And lo, sun glories none gainsaith!
Thus shall the wings of the soul emerge
White from the chrysalis of death.


A SEA SCENE


From rim to shimmering rim the sea
Is burnished like chalcedony.

The waves that set their lips to land
Scarce make a murmur on the sand.

The ships appear to poise between
Two voids of opalescent sheen.

Aye, here eternal calm seems set
In bland beatitude, and yet

A single potent hour,