Chapter III

SAND
DRIFT

“_Beautiful, Proud Sea_”

Careless forever, beautiful proud sea,
You laugh in happy thunder all alone,
You fold upon yourself, you dance your dance
Impartially on drift-weed, sand or stone.

You make us believe that we can outlive death,
You make us for an instant, for your sake,
Burn, like stretched silver of a wave,
Not breaking, but about to break.

_Land’s End_

The shores of the world are ours, the solitary
Beaches that bear no fruit, nor any flowers,
Only the harsh sea-grass that the wind harries
Hours on unbroken hours.

No one will envy us these empty reaches
At the world’s end, and none will care that we
Leave our lost footprints where the sand forever
Takes the unchanging passion of the sea.

_Sand Drift_

I thought I should not walk these dunes again,
Nor feel the sting of this wind-bitten sand,
Where the coarse grasses always blow one way,
Bent, as my thoughts are, by an unseen hand.

I have returned; where the last wave rushed up
The wet sand is a mirror for the sky
A bright blue instant, and along its sheen
The nimble sandpipers run twinkling by.

Nothing has changed; with the same hollow thunder
The waves die in their everlasting snow--
Only the place we sat is drifted over,
Lost in the blowing sand, long, long ago.

_Blue Stargrass_

If we took the old path
In the old field
The same gate would stand there
That will never yield.

Where the sun warmed us
With a cloak made of gold,
The rain would be falling
And the wind would be cold;

And we would stop to search
In the wind and the rain,
But we would not find the stargrass
By the path again.

_September Night_

We walked in the dew, in the drowsy starlight
To the sleepless, sleepy sound
Of insects singing in the low sea-meadows
For miles and miles around;
With a wheel and a whirr the resistless rhythm
Trembled incessantly;
Antares was red in the sky before us,
And behind us, the blackness of the sea.

_Low Tide_

The birds are gathering over the dunes,
Swerving and wheeling in shifting flight,
A thousand wings sweep darkly by
Over the dunes and out of sight.

Why did you bring me down to the sea
With the gathering birds and the fish-hawk flying,
The tide is low and the wind is hard,
Nothing is left but the old year dying.

I wish I were one of the gathering birds,
Two sharp black wings would be good for me--
When nothing is left but the old year dying,
Why did you bring me down to the sea?