Cale Rice - Sea Poems

Oh, yes, I raved, and said God was a Hun,
A Kaiser of a Universe that loathed him.
And back, too, would have leapt, into the waves,
But the same hands that saved were ready to hold me.

The sea asleep like a dreamer sighs;
The salt rock-pools lie still in the sun,
Except for the sidling crab that creeps
Thro the moveless mosses green and dun.
The small gray snail clings everywhere,
For the tide is out; and the sea-weed dries
Its tangled tresses in the warm air,
That seems to ooze from the far blue skies,
Where not a white gull on white wing flies.

The mollusc gleams like a gem amid
The scurf and the clustered green sea-grapes,
Whose trellis is but the rock's bare side,
Whose husbandman but the tide that drapes.
The little sandpiper tilts and picks
His food, on the wet sea-marges hid,
Till sudden a wave comes in and flicks
Him off, then flashes away to bid
Another frighten him – as it did.

O sweet is the world of living things,
And sweet are the mingled sea and shore!
It seems as if I never again
Shall find life ill – as oft before.
As if my days should come as the clouds
Come yonder – and vanish without wings;
As if all sorrow that ever shrouds
My soul and darkly about it clings
Had lost forever its ravenings.

As if I knew with a deeper sense
That good alone is ultimate;
That never an evil wrought of God
Or man came truly out of hate.
That Better springs from the heart of Worse,
As calm from the heaving elements;
That all things born to the Universe
May suffer and perish utterly hence,
But never refute its Innocence.

Gulls on the wind,
Crying! crying!
Are you the ghosts
Of Erin's dead?
Of the forlorn
Whose days went sighing
Ever for Beauty
That ever fled?

Ever for Light
That never kindled?
Ever for Song
No lips have sung?
Ever for Joy
That ever dwindled?
Ever for Love that stung?

Last night I slipt from the banks of dream
And swam in the currents of God,
On a tide where His fairies were at play,
Catching salt tears in their little white hands,
For human hearts;
And dancing, dancing, in gala bands,
On the currents of God;
And singing, singing: —

There is no wind blows here or spray —
Wind upon us!
Only the waters ripple away
Under our feet as we gather tears.
God has made mortals for the years,
Us for alway!
God has made mortals full of fears,
Fears for the night and fears for the day.
If they would free them of grief that sears,
If they would keep what love endears,
If they would lay no more lilies on biers —
Let them say!
For we are swift to enchant and tire
Time's will!
Our feet are wiser than all desire,
Our song is better than faith or fame;
To whom it is given no ill e'er came,
Who has it not grows chill!
Who has it not grows laggard and lame,
Nor knows that the world is a Minstrel's lyre,
Smitten and never still!..

Last night on the currents of God.

I long to see the solan-goose
Wing over Ailsa crag
At dusk again – or Girvan gulls at dawn;
To see the osprey grayly glide
The winds of Kamasaig:
For grayness now my heart is set upon.

The grayness of sea-spaces where
There's loneliness alone,
Save for the wings that sweep it with unrest,
Save for the hunger-cries that sound
And die into a moan,
Save for the moaning hunger in my breast.

For grayness is the hue of all
In life that is not lies.
A thousand years of tears are in my heart;
And only in their mystery
Can I be truly wise:
From light and laughter follies only start.

I long to see the mists again
Above the tumbling tide
Of Ailsa, at the coming of the night.
There's weariness and emptiness
And soul unsatisfied
Forever in the places of delight.

What memories have I of it,
The sea, continent-clasping,
The sea whose spirit is a sorcery,
The sea whose magic foaming is immortal!
What memories have I of it thro the years!

What memories of its shores!..
Of shadowy headlands doomed to stay the storm;
And red cliffs clawing ever into the tides;
Of misty moors whose royal heather purples;
Of channeled marshes, village-nesting hills;
Of crags wind-eaten, homes of hungry gulls;
Of bays —
Where sails float furled, resting softly at harbour,
Until, winging again, they sweep away.

What memories have I, too,
Of faring out at dawn upon tameless waters,
Upon the infinite wasted yearning of them,
While winds, the mystic harp-strings of the world,
Were sounding sweet farewells;
While coast and lighthouse tower were fading fast,
And from me all the world slipped like a garment.

What memories of mid-deeps!..
Of heaving on thro haunted vasts of foam,
Thro swaying terrors of tormented tides;
While the wind, no more singing, took to raving,
In rhythmic infinite words,
A chantey ancient and immeasurable
Concerning man and God.

What memories of fog-spaces —
Wide leaden deserts of dim wavelessness,
Smooth porpoise-broken glass
As gray as a dream upon despair's horizon;
What sailing soft till lo the shroud was lifted
And suddenly there came, as a great joy,
The blue sublimity of summer skies,
The azure mystery of happy heavens,
The passionate sweet parley of the breeze,
And dancing waves – that lured us on and on
Past islands above whose verdant mountain-heads
Enchanted clouds were hanging,
And whence wild spices wandered;
Past iridescent reefs and vessels bound
For ports unknown:
O far, far past, until the sun, in fire,
An impotent and shrunken orb lay dying,
On heaving twilight purple gathered round.

And then, what nights!..
The phantom moon in misty resurrection
Arising from her sepulchre in the East
And sparkling the dark waters —
The unremembering moon!
And covenants of star to faithful star,
Dewy, like tears of God, across the sky;
And under the moon's fair ring Orion running
Forever in great war adown the West.
What far, infinite nights!
With cloud-horizons where the lightning slumbered
Or wakened once and again with startled watch,
Again to fall asleep
And leave the moon-path free for all my thoughts
To wander peacefully
Away and still away
Until the stars sighed out in dawn's great pallor,
Just as the lands of my desire appeared.

What memories … have I of it!

The seven fleets of Venice
Set sail across the sea
For Cyprus and for Trebizond
Ayoub and Araby.
Their gonfalons are floating far,
St. Mark's has heard the mass,
And to the noon the salt lagoon
Lies white, like burning glass.