But death should sweetly visit us vagabonds of spring.
And so his heart forever goes inland with the tide,
Searching with many voices among the marshes wide.
Under the quiet starlight, up through the stirring reeds,
With whispering and lamenting it rises and recedes.
All night the lapsing rivers croon to their shingly bars
The wizardries that mingle the sea-wind and the stars.
And all night long wherever the moving waters gleam,
The little hills hearken, hearken, the great hills hear and dream.
And Malyn keeps the marshes all the sweet summer night,
Alone, foot-free, to follow a wandering wisp-light.
For every day at sundown, at the first beacon's gleam,
She calls the gulls her brothers and keeps a tryst with them.
"O gulls, white gulls, what see you beyond the sloping blue?
And where away's the Snowflake, she's so long overdue?"
Then, as the gloaming settles, the hilltop stars emerge
And watch that plaintive figure patrol the dark sea verge.
She follows the marsh fire; her heart laughs and is glad;
She knows that light to seaward is her own sailor lad!
What are these tales they tell her of wreckage on the shore?
Delay but makes his coming the nearer than before!
Surely her eyes have sighted his schooner in the lift!
But the great tide he homes on sets with an outward drift.
So will-o'-the-wisp deludes her till dawn, and she turns home
In unperturbed assurance, "To-morrow he will come."
This is the tale of Malyn, whom sudden grief so marred.
And still each lovely summer resumes that sweet regard,--
The old unvexed eternal indifference to pain;
The sea sings in the marshes, and June comes back again.
All night the lapsing rivers lisp in the long dike grass,