Chapter M: L. G (3)

Across the tide a sail
That tosses, and is gone--
And in my heart the kiss
That longing dreams upon.

Gray rocks, and grayer sea,
And surf along the shore--
And in my heart the face
That I shall see no more.

_Charles G. D. Roberts_

_The Sea_

The Sea! the Sea! the open Sea!
The blue, the fresh, the ever free!
Without a mark, without a bound,
It runneth the earth’s wide regions round;
It plays with the clouds; it mocks the skies;
Or like a cradled creature lies.

I’m on the Sea! I’m on the Sea!
I am where I would ever be;
With the blue above, and the blue below,
And silence wheresoe’er I go;
If a storm should come and awake the deep,
What matter? I shall ride and sleep.

I love (oh! how I love) to ride
On the fierce foaming bursting tide,
When every mad wave drowns the moon,
Or whistles aloft his tempest tune,
And tells how goeth the world below,
And why the south-west blasts do blow.

I never was on the dull tame shore,
But I lov’d the great Sea more and more,
And backward flew to her billowy breast,
Like a bird that seeketh its mother’s nest;
And a mother she was, and is to me;
For I was born on the open Sea.

The waves were white, and red the morn,
In the noisy hour when I was born;
And the whale it whistled, the porpoise rolled,
And the dolphins bared their backs of gold;
And never was heard such an outcry wild
As welcomed to life the Ocean-child!

I’ve lived since then, in calm and strife,
Full fifty summers a sailor’s life,
With wealth to spend and a power to range,
But never have sought, nor sighed for change;
And Death, whenever he come to me,
Shall come on the wide unbounded Sea!

_Bryan Waller Procter_

_The Sea Road_

Oh, green curved the hill road and beckoned to my feet,
Where the breath of the uplands came drifting fitful-sweet.
Moon mist, and cloud mist, and meadows drenched with dew,
Fir breath, and fern breath, and hill-winds stealing through
To stir the vagrant poppy-blooms that gipsy through the wheat.

But nearer and clearer than these there called to me
A little, waiting, dune-set road that comrades with the sea.

Oh, bright shone the plains’ road in ribbonings of gold,
Past lowly cottage casements tucked beneath a green hill’s fold.
Peat smoke, and hearth smoke, and toiler’s wayside fire,
Wife love, and child’s love, and humble hearts’ desire,
Peace and fireside plenty was the tale its windings told.

Yet nearer and clearer than these there called to me
A small road, dark with juniper, and open to the sea.

A little, watchful, sea-wife road unmindful of the gales,
All kirtled blue with sunlit waves, and coiffed with speeding sails.
Far sail, and near sail, the beating sea-gulls’ wings,
Far lands, the near lands, the lullaby she sings,
All the ports of all the world are in her whispered tales.

Ah, nearer and dearer than all there cries to me,
One little, crooning, sunset road set shoulder to the sea.

_Martha Haskell Clarke_

_The Sea_[3]