Part 13

Upward and forward! Time will restore us: Light is above us, Rest is before us.

1876

XII

TO me at my fifth-floor window The chimney-pots in rows Are sets of pipes pandean For every wind that blows;

And the smoke that whirls and eddies In a thousand times and keys Is really a visible music Set to my reveries.

O monstrous pipes, melodious With fitful tune and dream, The clouds are your only audience, Her thought is your only theme!

1875

XIII

BRING her again, O western wind, Over the western sea: Gentle and good and fair and kind, Bring her again to me!

Not that her fancy holds me dear, Not that a hope may be: Only that I may know her near, Wind of the western sea.

1875

XIV

THE wan sun westers, faint and slow; The eastern distance glimmers gray; An eerie haze comes creeping low Across the little, lonely bay; And from the sky-line far away About the quiet heaven are spread Mysterious hints of dying day, Thin, delicate dreams of green and red.

And weak, reluctant surges lap And rustle round and down the strand. No other sound . . . If it should hap, The ship that sails from fairy-land! The silken shrouds with spells are manned, The hull is magically scrolled, The squat mast lives, and in the sand The gold prow-griffin claws a hold.

It steals to seaward silently; Strange fish-folk follow thro’ the gloom; Great wings flap overhead; I see The Castle of the Drowsy Doom Vague thro’ the changeless twilight loom, Enchanted, hushed. And ever there She slumbers in eternal bloom, Her cushions hid with golden hair.

1875

THERE is a wheel inside my head Of wantonness and wine, An old, cracked fiddle is begging without, But the wind with scents of the sea is fed, And the sun seems glad to shine.

The sun and the wind are akin to you, As you are akin to June. But the fiddle! . . . It giggles and twitters about, And, love and laughter! who gave him the cue?— He’s playing your favourite tune.

1875

XVI

WHILE the west is paling Starshine is begun. While the dusk is failing Glimmers up the sun.

So, till darkness cover Life’s retreating gleam, Lover follows lover, Dream succeeds to dream.

Stoop to my endeavour, O my love, and be Only and for ever Sun and stars to me.

1876

XVII

THE sands are alive with sunshine, The bathers lounge and throng, And out in the bay a bugle Is lilting a gallant song.

The clouds go racing eastward, The blithe wind cannot rest, And a shard on the shingle flashes Like the shining soul of a jest;

While children romp in the surges, And sweethearts wander free, And the Firth as with laughter dimples . . . I would it were deep over me!