rain

THE SEA-BEAT MARINER, whose watchful eye
Full many a boist'rous night hath wak'd to weep;
When the keen blast descending from the sky,
Snatch'd his warm tear-drop from the rav'nous deep.

Drench'd by the chilling rain, his dreary hour
Creeps slowly onward to the dawn of day;
Till burning PHOEBUS darting thro' the show'r,
Warms with his golden beam the frothy spray:

With lightning's swiftness he ascends the mast,
And cries, "another tedious night is o'er;"
He spreads the swelling sail, he sees at last

I

A washing hangs upon the line,
but it's not mine.
None of the things that I can see
belong to me.
The neighbors got a radio with an aerial;
we got a little portable.
They got a lot of closet space;
we got a suitcase.

I say, "Le Roy, just how much are we owing?
Something I can't comprehend,
the more we got the more we spend...."
He only answers, "Let's get going."
Le Roy, you're earning too much money now.

I sit and look at our backyard
and find it very hard.

THE CHIME of a bell of gold
That flutters across the air,
The sound of a singing of old,
The end of a tale that is told,
Of a melody strange and fair,
of a joy that has grown despair:

For the things that have been for me
I shall never have them again;
The skies and the purple sea,
And day like a melody,
And night like a silver rain
Of stars on forest and plain.

They are shut, the gates of the day;
The night has fallen on me:
My life is a lightless way;

Dawn talks to Day
Over dew-gleaming flowers,
Night flies away
Till the resting of hours:
Fresh are thy feet
And with dreams thine eyes glistening,
Thy still lips are sweet
Though the world is a-listening.
O Love, set a word in my mouth for our meeting,
Cast thine arms round about me to stay my heart's beating!
O fresh day, O fair day, O long day made ours!

Morn shall meet noon
While the flower-stems yet move,
Though the wind dieth soon
And the clouds fade above.
Loved lips are thine

Love is enough: through the trouble and tangle
From yesterday's dawning to yesterday's night
I sought through the vales where the prisoned winds wrangle,
Till, wearied and bleeding, at end of the light
I met him, and we wrestled, and great was my might.

O great was my joy, though no rest was around me,
Though mid wastes of the world were we twain all alone,
For methought that I conquered and he knelt and he crowned me,
And the driving rain ceased, and the wind ceased to moan,

We have sung the song of the droving days,
Of the march of the travelling sheep;
By silent stages and lonely ways
Thin, white battalions creep.
But the man who now by the land would thrive
Must his spurs to a plough-share beat.
Is there ever a man in the world alive
To sing the song of the Wheat!
It's west by south of the Great Divide
The grim grey plains run out,
Where the old flock-masters lived and died
In a ceaseless fight with drought.
Weary with waiting and hope deferred

Night,
and the yellow pleasure of candle-light....
old brown books and the kind, fine face of the clock
fogged in the veils of the fire - it's cuddling tock.

The cat,
greening her eyes on the flame-litten mat;
wickedly, wakeful she yawns at the rain
bending the roses over the pane,
and a bird in my heart begins to sing
over and over the same sweet thing--

Safe in the house with my boyhood's love
and our children asleep in the attic above.

CLOUD-MAIDENS that float on forever,
Dew-sprinkled, fleet bodies, and fair,
Let us rise from our Sire's loud river,
Great Ocean, and soar through the air
To the peaks of the pine-covered mountains where the pines hang as tressed of hair.
Let us seek the watch towers undaunted,
Where the well-watered cornfields abound,
And through murmurs of rivers nymph-haunted,
The songs of the sea-waves resound;
And the sun in the sky never wearies of spreading his radiance around.

Let us cast off the haze

Oh, some may sing of the surging sea, or chant
of the raging main;
Or tell of the taffrail blown away by the raging
hurricane.
With an oh, of the feel of the salt sea spray as
it stippls the guffy's cheek!
And oh, for the sob of the creaking mast and the
halyard's aching squeak!
And some may sing of the galley-foist, and some of
the quadrireme,
And some of the day when the xebec came and hit us
abaft the beam.
Oh, some may sing of the girl in Kew that died for
a sailor's love,

Love is enough: ho ye who seek saving,
Go no further; come hither; there have been who have found it,
And these know the House of Fulfilment of Craving;
These know the Cup with the roses around it;
These know the World's Wound and the balm that hath bound it:
Cry out, the World heedeth not, 'Love, lead us home!'

He leadeth, He hearkeneth, He cometh to you-ward;
Set your faces as steel to the fears that assemble
Round his goad for the faint, and his scourge for the froward,