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

aye, less,
Can change this placid loveliness,

And cause, where life smiles fair and fain,
The raging demon death to reign!


MOONRISE BY THE SEA


Over the sea-rim peered the pallid moon
Out of a woven shroud
Of twilight purple, while their mighty tune
The breakers thundered loud.

No comrade star, only the mystery
Of that pale orb whose fire
Through immemorial nights has seemed to be
Fulfilled of dim desire.

And while its wan light drenched the foam-hid coasts,
To the low south wind's sigh
Methought the sad innumerable hosts
Of lovers dead went by;

And I was whelmed with sadness, with the sense
Of the immutable pathos of the years,
And how the sum of all love's opulence
Must be obscured by tears!


A SEA SONG


Dolphins under and sea-gulls over
The surge and shift of the dipping tide,
And you, my rover, my blithe sea-rover,
Sailing the path of the undenied.

In dreams I follow you, O my rover,
Wide, for the ways of the sea are wide;
Come back, come back when the voyage is over, -
Back to the heart of the long denied!


A SYMPHONY OF THE SEA

(GLOZE ROYAL)


The surges sing in ceaseless monotone
The songs and sagas of the long-ago;
Many and mournful are the memories blown
Across the tireless tides that ebb and flow.

Lo, he who walks beside the wide sea-shore,
And sees the waves unbreasted by the oar,
And lets his thoughts repose on days long flown,
Will slowly o'er his dreamy vision feel
A sweetly lingering sadness softly steal,
And he will pause and listen to the moan
The iterant billows make upon the sand;
And all will seem to him a slumber-land,
Where, through the long night-watches dim and lone,
The surges sing in ceaseless monotone!

And in his ear the glorious myths of yore
With all the rhythmic burdens that they bore,
Will be retold, replete with joy and woe; -
Ulysses' voyage will ring with epic peal,
And the strange tale of Argo's wandering keel;
Of high-banked Tyrian galleys will he know,
Of Roman triremes, and of many a band
The Vikings led from their far norland strand; -
Stories of strife and love in shine and snow,
The songs and sagas of the long-ago.

And there will rise within him, more and more,
The strong desire to learn the utmost lore
The great sea holds, that unto none is shown;
And he will cry and bid the deep unseal
Its sacred secrets, and to him reveal
What stern power rules it from what unseen throne.
But no vast shape will show a regnant hand,
Unless, perchance, wan Sorrow by him stand;
From Sorrow's pale, across the seas unsown,
Many and mournful are the memories blown.

O thou that hast, from decades gone before,
Of bitter and of sweet the fullest store,
Immeasurable sea, - in gloom and glow
Our joy, our terror and our love, - we kneel
At thy dark altar with a vain appeal;
Within thy mighty bosom, far below,
Lie hid the mysteries of Him who planned
The circling spheres that wheel at His command; -
Ah, Sea of Life, to one sure port we go
Across the tireless tides that ebb and flow!
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Publication Date: 05-21-2008

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