The Poetical Works of George Barlow :: :: University of Virginia Library

When at the last we stand beside the sea's grey water,
How passing sweet is then the earth's pale last flower-daughter
Who follows to the marge
Where yellow sand meets grey wild-crested waves far-gleaming;
Who once again sets heart and spirit and brain a-dreaming
Of old green forests lit by moonlight large.

No flowers are here to love, save this one blossom only
Which shines so strange and sweet upon the margin lonely
Where at the last we stand:
This blossom-spirit who brings the fair old earth's last message,
Which mixes with the weird and solemn bodeful presage
Of new love wafted from the sea to land.

In doubt and awe we stand, and mystic perturbation,
And all our nerves are thrilled with dread and expectation:
We know not what shall be.
Yet this we know,—that sweeter than all old loves' glances
Is this the whisper low whose tremulous breath advances
From over footless leagues of flowerless sea.

Through regions red with rose or white with scented lily
Our steps have passed,—from groves umbrageous unto hilly
Bare windy sun-struck peaks:
Dark eyes indeed we have loved, and river after river
Have tracked just out of love for mermaids' arms that quiver
Through the blue water and their flushed sweet cheeks.

And now at last the sea wide stretches out before us:
Far into the murk night recedes the sobbing chorus
Of hosts of plashing waves.
Is not beyond all loves this last pale love courageous
Who for our sake has left the groves and grots umbrageous,
And paths that many a tender green leaf paves?

Is not this love beyond all loves preceding solemn
Who, now the waves advance in white unending column
And threaten through the gloom,

Still true beside me stands, and gives me thoughts that cheer me
Of long-past days when loves innumerable were near me,
Both sweet and numberless as white may-bloom?

Ambassadress divine, who through thy lips and laughter
The earth's last message bring'st, will any love hereafter
Have quite the charm for me
(If there be loves indeed behind the mystic curtain)
That thou hast?—for thy love is earthly, sweet, and certain,—
Not like the love-clasp of the uncertain sea.

Thou art the messenger who bringest to the portal
Of death,—or, it may be, the gate of life immortal,—
(So doubtful is the deep!)
The farewell words of earth;—the farewell of the willows
That sounds so strange amid the treeless plunge of billows;
The last voice of the woods where lost dreams sleep:

The farewell of the birds; the farewell of the arches
Wherethrough the gold sun peeps, and lights the forest-larches
To their most tender green;
The farewell of the hills and all the blue-haired rivers;
The farewell of each reed that by the water quivers;
The voice of each spot where love's steps have been:

The voices of old loves,—their soft good-bye eternal;
The farewell of the leaves, now green-robed, young, and vernal,
Autumnal now and red:
The voice of all these things, O true last love, thou bringest;
With their collective voice beside the sea thou singest,—
Thou the one link between the live and dead.

So art thou strangely sweet. So is this love intenser
Than all the old when flowers and loves and leaves in denser
Gay squadrons shone around.
For now thou hast no lute, and I have never a poem:
We have no power to pay King Love the chant we owe him
Save only with the waves' untuneful sound.

If thou dost travel back, tell all the flowers and faces
Of old loves in the woods and all remembered places
That all my love was true.
Take my farewell to all: to every river-valley
And forest where the sweet hyacinthine armies rally
And flaunt their banners of empyreal blue.

If thou dost travel back. But wilt thou travel forward?
Wilt thou with me forego the journey backward, shoreward,
And tempt the deep with me?
Wilt thou, when all is dark and all is very lonely,
Be on this awful waste the one white flower,—the only
Angel of life upon the death-black sea?