William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. (1878–1962). Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1920.

My Lonely One

EVEN as a hawk’s in the large heaven’s hollow

Are the great ways and gracious of your love,

No lesser heart or wearier wing may follow

In those’ broad gyres where you rest and move.

Most merciless, most high, most proud, most lonely—

In the clear space between the sky and sea

Wheel her huge orbits, where the sea-winds only

Wander the sun-roads of Immensity.

Yet have I known your heart and of what fashion

Your love, how great, how hardly to be borne—

Your tenderness, too perfect for compassion,

Your divine strength, too pure and proud for scorn.

You are most beautiful; though it is given

But few to find you, fewer still to keep

Your high path through the solitude of heaven,

My lonely one, your watch upon the Deep.

Now toward the gold glow of the sunset’s splendour

Veer your great vans—what haven in the west

Now draws you—while the mellowing light makes tender

Your dripping plumes—what islands of the blest?

Lift me, O lift me up to you forever,

Beautiful Terror! Let your sacred might

Stoop to me here and save—O let me never

Sink from you now to share a lesser flight!

Even as I pray my wings of longing fail me,

And my heart flags. In solitude you move

Down the night’s shore: not praying shall avail me

To lift me, fallen from your faultless love.

The Freeman