Read Ebook: Sea Poems by Rice Cale Young

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Ebook has 104 lines and 11628 words, and 3 pages

, Day and night there is sound of bells, Seeking the port they calmly steer, Clearing the port they ring farewells. Under the sun or under the stars , Under the moon or under morning Do they swing, as the tide swells.

All the ships of the world come here, Rest a little and then are gone, Over the crystal planet-sphere Swept, thro every season, on. Swept to every cape and isle , Swept till over them sweeps the sorrow Of their last sea-dawn.

UNDER THE SKY

Far out to sea go the fishing junks, With all sails set, The tide swings gray and the clouds sway, The wind blows wet; Blows wet from the long coast lying dim As if mist-born. Far out they sail, as the stars pale, The stars of morn.

Far out to sea go the fishing junks, And I who pass Upon a deck that is vaster reck No more, alas, Of all their life, or they of mine, Than comes to this,-- That under the sky we live and die, Like all that is.

A SONG FOR HEALING

When I return to the world again, The world of fret and fight, To grapple with godless things and men, In battle, wrong or right, I will remember this--the sea, And the white stars hanging high, And the vessel's bow Where calmly now I gaze to the boundless sky.

When I am deaf with the din of strife, And blind amid despair, When I am choked with the dust of life And long for free soul-air, I will recall this sound--the sea's, And the wide horizon's hope, And the wind that blows And the phosphor snows That fall as the cleft waves ope.

When I am beaten--when I fall On the bed of black defeat, When I have hungered, and in gall Have got but shame to eat, I will remember this--the sea, And its tide as soft as sleep, And the clear night sky That heals for aye All who will trust its Deep.

A SINGHALESE LOVE LAMENT

As the cocoanut-palm That pines, my love, Away from the sound Of the planter's voice, Am I, for I hear No more resound Your song by the pearl-strewn sea! The sun may come And the moon wax round, And in its beam My mates may rejoice, But I feast not And my heart is dumb, As I long, O long, for thee!

In the jungle-deeps, Where the cobra creeps, The leopard lies In wait for me, But O, my love, When the daylight dies There is more to my dread than he! Harsh lonely tears That assail my eyes Are worse to bear,-- For the misery That makes them well Is the long, long years That I moan away from thee!

O again, again, In my katamaran A-keel would I push To your palmy door! Again would I hear The heave and hush Of your song by the plantain-tree. But far away Do I toil and crush The hopes that arise At my sick heart's core. For never near Does it come, the day That draws me again to thee!

THE CITY

Soft and fair by the Desert's edge, And on the dim blue edge of the sea, Where white gulls wing all day and fledge Their young on the high cliff's sandy ledge, There is a city I have beheld, Sometime or where, by day or dream, I know not which, for it seems enspelled As I am by its memory.

Pale minarets of the Prophet pierce Above it into the white of the skies, And sails enchanted a thousand years Flit at its feet while fancy steers. No face of all its faces to me Is known--no passion of it or pain. It is but a city by the sea, Enshrined forever beyond my eyes!

FULL TIDE

Sea-scents, wild-rose scents, Bay and barberry too, Drench the wind, the Maine wind, That gulls are dipping thro, With soft hints, sweet hints, With lull, lure and desire; With memory-wafts and mysteries, And all the ineffable histories Made when the sea and land meet, And the sun lends nuptial fire.

Sea-foam, and dream-foam, And which is which, who knows, When all day long the heart goes out To every wave that blows, That blossoms on the bright tide, Then sheds a shimmering crest And yields its tossing place to one Whose blooming is as quickly done-- For beauty is ever swift--begot Of rapture and unrest.

Sea-deeps, and soul-deeps, And where shall faith be found If not within the heart's beat Or in the surging sound Of the sea, which is the earth's heart, Beating with tireless might; Beating--tho but a tragedy Life seems on every land and sea; Beating to bring all breath, somehow, Out of despair's blight.

THE HERDING

Quietly, quietly in from the fields Of the grey Atlantic the billows come, Like sheep to the fold. Shorn by the rocks of fleecy foam, They sink on the brown seaweed at home; And a bell, like that of a bellwether, Is scarcely heard from the buoy-- Save when they suddenly stumble together, In herded hurrying joy, Upon its guidance: then soft music From it is tolled.

Far out in the murk that follows them in Is heard the call of the fog-horn's voice, Like a shepherd's--low. And the strays as if waiting it seem to pause And lift their heads and listen--because It is sweet from wandering ways to be driven, When we have fearless breasts, When all that we strayed for has been given, When no want molests Us more--no need of the tide's ebbing And tide's flow.

ON THE MAINE COAST

The rocks, lean fingers of the land, Reach out into the sea And cool themselves, all day long, In the tide drippingly. They catch the seaweed in them And the starfish on their tips, And gulls that light And the swift flight Of swallows skimming grey and white-- And spars of broken ships.

The moon, God's perfect silver, With which He pays the world For toil and quest and day's unrest, Is washed on them and swirled. And avidly they seize it, Then let it slip away, Only again And yet again To grasp at it--as eager men At joy no hand can stay.

SEANCE

Hovering wings of terns Over the rock-pools flutter, For the tide, ebbed far out, Seems to stumble and stutter; Seems like a spirit lost, Unable to come again Back to the wonted ways and days Of ever-wanting men.

And the moon, a medium Trance-pale, is laying her light Over its surge--till, lo, It turns from the deep and night. And the spirit-word it brings Is the message of all time, That doubt is only the ebb of faith, Which ever reflows sublime!

A SIDMOUTH LAD

Salcombe Hill and four hills more Lie to leftward of this shore. On the right Peak Hill arises Ever rises, sickening, o'er.

Two score rotting years I've seen Sidmouth sit those hills between: Only Sidmouth--and twice over Must I bide it, as I've been.

WIDOWED

One wild gull on a wilder storm, Winging to keep her lone heart warm. One wild gull by the surf--and I, Beaten by wind and rain and sky.

One wild gull in the offing lost, Wilder heart in my bosom tost. One wild gull--O why but one! Two, dear God, should there be--or none!

TO THE SEA

Are you enraged, O sea, with the blue peace Of heaven, so to uplift your armied waves, Your billowy rebellion against its ease, And with Tartarean mutter from cold caves, From shuddering profundities where shapes Of awe glide thro entangled leagues of ooze, To hoot your watery omens evermore, And evermore your moanings interfuse With seething necromancy and mad lore?

Or do you labour with the drifting bones Of countless dead, O mighty Alchemist, Within whose stormy crucible the stones Of sunk primordial shores, granite and schist, Are crumbled by your all-abrasive beat? With immemorial chanting to the moon, And cosmic incantation, do you crave Rest to be found not till your wilds are strewn Frigid and desert over earth's last grave?

You seem drunk with immensity, mad, blind-- With raving deaf, with wandering forlorn, Parent of Demogorgon whose dire mind Is night and earthquake, shapeless shame and scorn Of the o'ermounting birth of Harmony. Bound in your briny bed and gnawing earth With foamy writhing and fierce-panted tides, You are as Fate in torment of a dearth Of black disaster and destruction's strides.

And how you shatter silence from the world, Incarnate Motion of all mystery! Whose waves are fury-wings, whose winds are hurled Whither your Ghost tempestuous can see A desolate apocalypse of death. Yea, how you shatter silence from the world, With emerald overflowing, waste on waste Of flashing susurration, dashed and swirled On isles and continents that shrink abased!

And yet, O veering veil of the Unknown, Gathered from primal mist and firmament; O surging shape of Life's unfathomed moan, Whelming humanity with fears unmeant; Yet do I love you, far above all fear, And loving you unconquerably trust The runes that from your ageless surfing start Would read, were they revealed, gust upon gust, That Immortality is might of heart!

SEA-MAD

Three waves of the sea came up on the wind to me! One said: "Away! he is dead! Upon my foam I have flung his head! Go back to your cote, you never shall wed!-- "

Three waves of the sea came up on the wind to me. Two brake. The third with a quake Cried loud, "O maid, I'll find for thy sake His dead lost body: prepare his wake!"

Three waves of the sea came up on the wind to me. One bore-- And swept on the shore-- His pale, pale face I shall kiss no more! Ah, woe to women death passes o'er!

THE ATHEIST

Over a scurf of rocks the tide Wanders inward far and wide, Lifting the sea-weed's sloven hair, Filling the pools and foaming there, Sighing, sighing everywhere.

Merged are the marshes, merged the sands, Save the dunes with pine-tree hands Stretching upward toward the sky, Where the sun, their god, moves high: Would I too had a god--yea, I!

For, the sea is to me but sea, And the sky but infinity. Tides and times are but some chance Born of a primal atom-dance. All is a mesh of Circumstance.

In it there is no Heart--no Soul-- No illimitable Goal-- Only wild happenings, by wont Made into laws no might can shunt From the deep grooves in which they hunt.

Wings of the gull I watch or claws Of the cold crab whose strangeness awes: Faces of men that feel the force Of a hid thing they call life's course: It is their hoping or remorse.

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