Wings

As a blue-necked mallard alighting in a pool
Among marsh-marigolds and splashing wet
Green leaves and yellow blooms, like jewels set
In bright, black mud, with clear drops crystal-cool,
Bringing keen savours of the sea and stir
Of windy spaces where wild sunsets flame
To that dark inland dyke, the thought of her
Into my brooding stagnant being came.
And all my senses quickened into life,
Tingling and glittering, and the salt and fire
Sang through my singing blood in eager strife
Until through crystal airs we seemed to be
Soaring together, one fleet-winged desire
Of windy sunsets and the wandering sea.

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The Parrots

Somewhere, somewhen I've seen,
But where or when I'll never know,
Parrots of shrilly green
With crests of shriller scarlet flying
Out of black cedars as the sun was dying
Against cold peaks of snow.
From what forgotten life
Of other worlds I cannot tell
Flashes that screeching strife;
Yet the shrill colour and shrill crying
Sing through my blood and set my heart replying
And jangling like a bell.

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The Cakewalk

In smoky lamplight of a Smyrna CafÉ,
He saw them, seven solemn negroes dancing,
With faces rapt and out-thrust bellies prancing
In a slow solemn ceremonial cakewalk,
Dancing and prancing to the sombre tom-tom
Thumped by a crookbacked grizzled negro squatting.
And as he watched ... within the steamy twilight
Of swampy forest in rank greenness rotting,
That sombre tom-tom at his heartstrings strumming
Set all his sinews twitching, and a singing
Of cold fire through his blood — and he was dancing
Among his fellows in the dank green twilight
With naked, oiled, bronze-gleaming bodies swinging
In a rapt holy everlasting cakewalk
For evermore in slow procession prancing.

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Driftwood

Black spars of driftwood burn to peacock flames,
Sea-emeralds and sea-purples and sea-blues,
And all the innumerable ever-changing hues
That haunt the changeless deeps but have no names,
Flicker and spire in our enchanted sight:
And as we gaze, the unsearchable mystery,
The unfathomed cold salt magic of the sea,
Shines clear before us in the quiet night.
We know the secret that Ulysses sought,
That moonstruck mariners since time began
Snatched at a drowning hazard — -strangely brought
To our homekeeping hearts in drifting spars
We chanced to kindle under the cold stars —
The secret in the ocean-heart of man.

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Quiet

Only the footprints of the partridge run
Over the billowy drifts on the mountain-side;
And now on level wings the brown birds glide
Following the snowy curves, and in the sun
Bright birds of gold above the stainless white
They move, and as the pale blue shadows move,
With them my heart glides on in golden flight
Over the hills of quiet to my love.
Storm-shaken, racked with terror through the long
Tempestuous night, in the quiet blue of morn
Love drinks the crystal airs, and peace newborn
Within his troubled heart, on wings aglow
Soars into rapture, as from the quiet snow
The golden birds; and out of silence, song.

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Reveille

Still bathed in its moonlight slumber, the little white house by the cedar
Stands silent against the red dawn;
And nothing I know of who sleeps there, to the travail of day yet unwakened,
Behind the blue curtains undrawn:
But I dream as we march down the roadway, ringing loud and white-rimed in the moonlight,
Of a little dark house on a hill
Wherein when the battle is over, to the rapture of day yet unwakened,
We shall slumber as dreamless and still.

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