WRECKAGE
I
Love and the drift of many dreams,
Under the moon of a Florida night,
Over the beach with its silvery seams
White as a sail is white.
Love that entered into two lives
Out of the dreams that the nights have borne,
Over the waves where the vapor drives,
Mists that the stars have torn.
Love that welded two hearts and hands
There by the sea, 'neath the shell-white moon,
Like to the stars and the mists and the sands
Setting two lives in tune.
Nights of love that one still keeps
Sacred;—nights, that the faith of one
Heartened there in the treacherous deeps,
Under a tropic sun.
II
Parting he said to her: “Let us be true to them,—
All of our dreams, of the night, of the morning:
What is our present, its hope, but a clew to them?
What is our past but a dream and a warning?
Have you considered the life that regretfully
Foldeth weak arms to the fate it might master?—
Had I been true to my dreams, never fretfully
Halted, my future and joy had been faster.”
They had come down to the ocean that, bellowing,
Boiled on the sand and the shells that were broken;
All of the summer was fading and yellowing;
Now they must part and their vows had been spoken.
It had befallen that heaven was lowering;
Over the sea, like the wraith of a wrecker,
Clamored the gull; and the mist in the showering
East seemed the ghost of a lofty three-decker.
Infinite foam; and the boom of the hollowing
Breakers that buried the rocks to their shoulders;
Battle and boast of the deep in the wallowing
World of the waves where the red sunset smoulders.
Long was the leap of the foam on the thunderous
Beach; and each end of the beach was a flying
Fog of the spray: and she said, “Let it sunder us!
Still we will love, for love is undying!”
Yet, if it comes to the thing he has said to her?—
Wreckage and death?—the love she has given
Turned into sorrow?—Oh, that was a dread to her!
He, like a weed, by the waters far driven!
Weeping, her bosom with shudders was shaken as
She for a moment hard clung to her sailor,
Kissed him and—parted. His boat had been taken; as
Paler it grew the woman grew paler.
III
All day the rain drove, falling
Upon the sombre sea;
All day, his wet sail hauling,
The sailor tacked a-lea;
And through the wild rain calling,
What was it?—was it he?
At dusk the gull clanged, drifting
Above the boiling brine;
And, through the wan west sifting,
Streamed one red sunset line;
And in its wild light shifting,
His far sail seemed to shine.
All night the wind wailed, sighing
Along the wreck-strewn coast;
All night the surf, defying,
Rolled thunder in and boast;
All night she heard a crying—
The sea? or some lost ghost?
IV
The balm of the night and the glory,
The music and scent of the sea,
Are as song to her heart or a story
Of the never-to-be.
The stars and the night and the whiteness
Of foam on the stretch of the sand;
Faint foam that is tossed, like the brightness
Of a mermaiden's hand.
No sail on the ocean; no sailor
On shore, and the winds all asleep;
And her face in the starlight far paler
Than women who weep.
A mist on the deep; and the ghostly
White moon in the deep of the night;
And a light that is neither; that mostly
Is shadow not light.
No sea-gull, that vanished with gleaming
Of wings, in the swing of the spray;
Perhaps it was only her dreaming,
Or merely a ray
Of moonlight; the glimmering essence
Of all that is grayest and dim—
But never his face, or his presence
That dripped in each limb.
And she cried through the night, “Let me perish!
O God, let me die of despair!
If he whom I love, whom I cherish,
Is weltering there!”
She seemed but a sea-mist made woman,
And he but a sound of the sea
Made man where nothing was human,
And never would be.
V
Long he sailed the deep that glasses
The face of God and His majesty;
Passed the Horn and the Seas of Grasses,
Drifting aimlessly.
Time went by with its days that ever
Burden the hearts of those who be
Far away from their love; whom sever
Leagues of the shapeless sea.
Land at last, whose reefs rolled broken
Foam of the balked waves everywhere;
Land; one tangle of weeds and oaken
Wreck and of rocks laid bare.
Here and there the sand stretched livid
Leagues of famine, one blinding glare;
Crags, o'er which gaunt birds winged vivid,
Harsh in the earthquake air.
A little cloud in the sunset's splendor;
A little cloud that the sunset stains:
Night, and a wisp of a moon that, slender,
Dreams of the hurricanes.
Winds that stride as with sounding sandals;
Winds that the tempest has loosed from chains:
Light that leaps like a spear he handles,
Shaking his thunder-manes.
Wrenching the world in wreck asunder,
Black rebellion of hell and night;
Wrath and roar of the rocks and thunder,
Flame and the winds that fight ...
Beating the drift and the hush together,
Waves and winds that the morn makes white;
Calm and peace of the tropic weather
After the typhoon's might.
Clouds blow by and the storm 's forgotten.
Savage coasts where the sea-cow feeds.
Wash of weeds and the sea-weeds rotten.
And a dead face in the weeds.
None to know him or name him brother;
Only the savage in feathers and beads;
The South-Sea Islander, fitting another
Barb in the shaft he speeds.
Far away where the sea-gulls gather;
Far away where the evening falls,
Lone she stands where the wild waves lather,
Rolling the sea in walls.—
Who shall tell her, the lonely tryster?
Tell her of him on whom she calls?—
Suns that beat on his face and blister?
Stars? or the sea that crawls?
VI
She dreamed that there, beside the ocean sitting,
Alone she watched, when, at her feet, behold!
Between the foam-ridge and the sea-gull's flitting,
His body rolled.
All was not as it was before they parted;
She dreamed he had remembered, she forgot;
He 'd said he would forget her, angry-hearted,
And yet could not.
And then it seemed that, had she known, she surely
Had given pity when she could not give
Her love to him, who loved her madly, purely,
And bade him live.
And then she dreamed she looked upon the slanted
Hulk of a wreck: and high above the wave,
Worn of the wind and of the cactus planted,
His nameless grave.
