SONG
COME, Love, awaken!
O‘er the wild salt sea,
Shadows strange-shapen whirl themselves and flee
As eddying mist, by storm winds overtaken,
And sunbeams kissed—the shafts all curled and shaken
In shuddering ecstasy!
Come, Love, nor list to tired dreams that twist
Thy lithe long limbs in fierce abandonment,
Awake, and learn of me the secret of the sea,
Whose meaning is the sum of all things blent
In fiercest harmony.
Soft winds are calling on the cloudy deep,
(Like foam-flowers falling from the breasts of Sleep
Their Lotus-kiss is), such a world forestalling
Of wanton blisses, that the fear of palling
Makes e’en the Sirens weep.
Ah me!
What serpent hisses from out those purple bysses,
Far in the womb of the long-lying sea?
She wakes
I
Nor dare he creep back to her soul, whence Sleep
Has torn aside the mist—hung drapery
;
Too strange the way, and steep.
ETHEL ARCHER.
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