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Read Ebook: Sea Poems by Rice Cale Young
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Ebook has 104 lines and 11628 words, and 3 pages
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.
Yet it may be that I have missed Something that only they who tryst, Not with the sequence of events But with their viewless Immanence, Find and acclaim with spirit-sense.
AT THE HELM
Fog, and a wind that blows the sea Blindly into my eyes. And I know not if my soul shall be When the day dies.
But if it be not and I lose All that men live to gain-- I who have known but heaving hues Of wind and rain--
Still I shall envy no man's lot, For I have held this great, Never in whines to have forgot That Fate is Fate.
IMPERTURBABLE
Three times the fog rolled in today, a silent shroud, From which the breakers ran like ghosts, moaning and tumbling. Three times a startled sea-bird cried aloud, On the wind stumbling.
But I cast my net with never a fear, tho wraiths in me And birds of wild unrest were stirring and starting and crying. For I knew that under the sway of every sea There is calm lying.
WASTE
And yet I flung it into the tide, And went my way. I climbed the gray rocks, far and wide, And many a cove of peace I tried, With none of them all to be satisfied, The whole long day.
For I had wasted a beautiful thing, Which might have won Each passing heart to pause and sing, On the sea-path there, of its blossoming. And who wastes beauty shall feel want's sting, As I had done.
RESURGENCE
I was content, O Sea, to be free for a space from striving, Content as the brown weed is, at rest on rocks in the sun, When the salt tide is out, and the surf no more is riving At its roots, or swirling and bidding it sway where the white waves run.
I was content--with life, and love, and a little over; A little achieved of the much that is given to men to do. But now with your tidal strife do you come again, vain rover, And tell of vastitudes, to be sailed, or sounded, anew.
Now again do you surge. And the fathomless tides of thinking, Of wanting, waiting, despairing--or daring--with you come; The inner tides of the soul, that had ebbed with slumberous shrinking, But now are bursting again, thro the caves of it long numb.
So vainly I lie on the cliff with the blissful Blue above me And listless sated gulls afloat below on the swells, For I am soothless, sateless, because of desires that shove me Out and away with the winds, on quests no distance quells!
LIFE'S ANSWER
A stroke of lightning stabbed the storm-black sea, As if it sought the heart of Life thereunder, And meant to put an end to it utterly;-- Then came thunder-- Wildly applauding thunder.
Riven with fear the foam-crests ran before it, Hissed by the rain and beaten down to darkness. A gull rose out of the murk with wings that tore it-- Life's answer to the storm's terrible starkness.
AS THE TIDE COMES IN
The quivering terns dart wild and dive, As the tide comes tumbling in. The calm rock-pools grow all alive, With the tide tumbling in. The crab who under the brown weed creeps, And the snail who lies in his house and sleeps, Awake and stir, as the plunging sweeps Of the tide come tumbling in.
Gray driftwood swishes along the sand, As the tide comes tumbling in. With wreck and wrack from many a land, On the tide, tumbling in. About the beach are a broken spar, A pale anemone's torn sea-star And scattered scum of the waves' old war, As the tide tumbles in.
And, oh, there is a stir at the heart of me, As the tide comes tumbling in. All life once more is a part of me, As the tide tumbles in. New hopes awaken beneath despair And thoughts slip free of the sloth of care, While beauty and love are everywhere-- As the tide comes tumbling in.
SENSE-SWEETNESS
Flowers are dancing, waves playing, pines swaying, gulls are a-swarm; Sea and heather, sunning together, glad of the weather, with God are warm.
Flowers are dancing, clouds winging, larks singing, summer abrew-- Summer the old ecstatic passion of Life to fashion the world anew.
TIDALS
Low along the sea, low along the sea, The gray gulls are flying, and one sail swings; The tide is foaming in; the soft wind sighing; The brown kelp is stretching, to the surf, harp-strings.
Low along the sea, low along the sea, The gray gulls are flying, and one sail fades; The tide is foaming out; the soft wind dying; And white stars are peeping from the night's pale shades.
A SAILOR'S WIFE
Into port when the sun was setting Rode the ship that bore my love, Over the breakers wildly fretting, Under the skies above.
Down to the beach I ran to meet him; He would come as he had said: And he came--in a sailor's coffin, Dead! . . . . . .
O the ships of the sea! the lovers Torn by them apart!... The tide has nothing now to tell me, The breakers break my heart!
TO SEA!
Give me the tiller; up with the sail! Now let her swing to the breeze. Out to sea with a dripping rail, To sea, with a heart at ease!
Out of the Harbour! out of the Bay! Out by the valiant Light, Out by rocks where the young gulls lay-- And glad winds teach them flight!
Out of the Harbour! out of the Bay! Out to the open sea! O there's not in the world a way To feel so wildly free!
So, let her quiver! So, let her leap! So, let her dance the foam! All life else is a narrow keep, The sea alone is home!
GIVE OVER, O SEA!
Give over, O sea! You never shall reach Nirvana! Your tides, like the tidal generations, ever shall rise and fall, And your infinite waves find birth, rebirth, and billowy dissolution.
The years of your existence are unending. The years of your unresting are forever. The sun, who is desire, ever begets in you his passion, And the moon is ever drawing you, with silvery soft alluring, To surge and sway, to wander and fret, to waste yourself in foam. So Buddha-calm shall never descend upon you.
And tho it may often seem you have found the Way, Your tempest-sins return and quicken to wild reincarnations, And again great life, pulsing and perilous, Omnipotent life, that ever resurges thro the universe, Lashes you back to striving, back to yearning, back to speech. To utterance on all shores of the world Of things unutterable.
Give over then, you never shall reach Nirvana! Nor I, who am your acolyte for a moment; Who swing a censer of fragrant words before your priestly feet, That tread these altar-rocks, bedraped with weeds gently afloat, And with the wild flutter of gulls wildly mysterious.
Give over and call your winds again to join you! O chanter of deep enchantments, of uncharted litanies, Call them and bid them say with you that life transcends retreat, And that, in the temple of its Immanence, There is no peace that does not spring daily from peacelessness, And no Nirvana save in the lee of storm.
THE NUN
A lone palm leans in the moonlight, Over a convent wall. The sea below is waking and breaking With a calm heave and fall. A young nun sits at a window; For Heaven she is too fair; Yet even the dove of God might nest In her bosom beating there.
A lone ship sails from the harbour: Whom does it bear away? Her lover who, sin-hearted, has parted And left her but to pray? She has no lover, nor ever Has heard afar love's sigh. Only the Convent's vesper vow Has ever dimmed her eye.
For naught knows she of her beauty, More than the palm of its peace: And none shall cross her portal, to mortal Desires to bend her knees. The ways of the world have flowers, And any who will pluck those; But in His hand, against all harm, God still will keep some rose.
LAST SIGHT OF LAND
The clouds in woe hang far and dim; I look again, and lo, Only a faint and shadow line Of shore--I watch it go.
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