By cove and cape, by bluff and bay,
Through depths of storm, through vasts of calm,
They speed their way.

The pharos flashes on their flight;
They do not heed its beckoning beam;
The great North, stretching weird and white,
Lures like a dream;

Lures, and they answer to the call;
Charms, and they yield them to the spell,
Moved ever by a subtle thrall
Inscrutable.

Do you not feel it, comrade, too,
The inescapable delight,
The mounting rapture, that bids you
Take vernal flight?




A SEA CHANGE


Night-long I heard the poignant undertone,
The interminable sobbing of the sea;
And now that morn breaks dim and dolorously
I mark the riotous surges landward blown,
Tempestuous and towering, and hurled prone