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Affectionately Inscribed to M. E. H.
HOW joyously the young sea-mew | |
| Lay dreaming on the waters blue | |
| Whereon our little bark had thrown | |
| A little shade, the only one, | |
| But shadows ever man pursue. | 5 |
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| Familiar with the waves and free | |
| As if their own white foam were he, | |
| His heart upon the heart of ocean | |
| Lay learning all its mystic motion, | |
| And throbbing to the throbbing sea. | 10 |
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| And such a brightness in his eye | |
| As if the ocean and the sky | |
| Within him had lit up and nurst | |
| A soul God gave him not at first, | |
| To comprehend their majesty. | 15 |
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| We were not cruel, yet did sunder | |
| His white wing from the blue waves under | |
| And bound it, while his fearless eyes | |
| Shone up to ours in calm surprise, | |
| As deeming us some ocean wonder. | 20 |
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| We bore our ocean bird unto | |
| A grassy place where he might view | |
| The flowers that curtsey to the bees, | |
| The waving of the tall green trees, | |
| The falling of the silver dew. | 25 |
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| But flowers of earth were pale to him | |
| Who had seen the rainbow fishes swim; | |
| And when earth’s dew around him lay | |
| He thought of ocean’s wingëd spray, | |
| And his eye waxëd sad and dim. | 30 |
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| The green trees round him only made | |
| A prison with their darksome shade; | |
| And dropped his wing, and mournëd he | |
| For his own boundless glittering sea— | |
| Albeit he knew not they could fade. | 35 |
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| Then One her gladsome face did bring, | |
| Her gentle voice’s murmuring, | |
| In ocean’s stead his heart to move | |
| And teach him what was human love: | |
| He thought it a strange, mournful thing. | 40 |
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| He lay down in his grief to die, | |
| (First looking to the sea-like sky | |
| That hath no waves) because, alas | |
| Our human touch did on him pass, | |
| And with our touch, our agony. | 45 |
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