Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/370

THE CARIB SEA Speed thee, wind of the deep,

For the cyclone comes in wrath!

The distant forests moan;

Thou hast but an hour thine own,—

An hour thy tryst to keep,

Ere the hounds of tempest leap

And follow upon thy path.

Whisperer, tarry a space!

She waits for thee in the night;

She leans from the casement there

With the star-blooms in her hair,

And a shadow falls like lace

From the fern-tree over her face,

And over her mantle white.

Spirit of air and fire,

To-night my herald be!

Tell her I love her well,

And all that I bid thee, tell,

And fold her ever the nigher

With the strength of my soul's desire,

Wind of the Carib sea!

THE ROSE AND THE JASMINE

dies the rippling murmur of the strings

That followed long, half-striving to retake,

The burden of the lover's ended song.

Silence! but we who listened linger yet,

Two of the soul's near portals still unclosed—

Sight and the sense of odor. At our feet,

Beneath the open jalousies, is spread

A copse of leaf and bloom, a knotted wild

Of foliage and purple flowering vines,

With here a dagger-plant to pierce them through, 340