Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/114

104 And the blown spray bedewed me: whence my heart,

Like a sea-shell, hath in it sounding seas,

Echoing forever. There my childhood grew

With pure attachments bound, spontaneous joys,

To the sea's being; all the wave endues

With light and color shared my boyhood blood,

And made itself the framework of my thoughts

And channel of my feelings; and, ofttimes,

Awe came upon me, unintelligible,

In presence of the simple things of earth,

The dawn, the breeze, the stars, beside the sea.

In the long years of that sea-shepherding

There was one hour I nevermore forgot.

I stood amid the radiance of the noon,

Flooded with beauty; the bright, heavenly curve

Domed the blue deep, and from light's centre poured

On me the benediction of the seas

I had so loved; its winds, its blowing tides,

Voices mysterious, touch and sight divine,

The crests of sunset flung far down the west,

The rosy shallop of the breaking dawn

Breasting the island-breakers, dark a-gleam,—

Uncounted aspects, mingling all their grace,—

Ensphered me; and the gray sea, golden-tongued,

Upgathering invisible mystery,

Flashed through me, wave on wave, its effluence,