| |
| THE DUNES are graves that shift and dance, | |
| Showing a skeleton | |
| When by the pushing wind’s advance | |
| Their coffin is undone, | |
| And in the ribbed and bitter sand | 5 |
| A murdered tree puts out | |
| A white limb like a ghastly hand, | |
| A dead trunk like a snout. | |
| |
| The dunes are ghosts that line the beach, | |
| Hidden and veiled and wild, | 10 |
| Now holding silence, each with each, | |
| Now lisping like a child. | |
| And to their speech the waves reply, | |
| The wind and the low waves, | |
| Whispering and wildly wondering why | 15 |
| They talk of ghosts and graves. | |
| |
| They are as graves, they are as ghosts, | |
| They are as sphinxes set | |
| For umpires on these desolate coasts | |
| With life and death at fret: | 20 |
| Life with her grass and juniper, | |
| Death with his cloud of sand, | |
| She strives with him and he with her | |
| Between the lake and land. | |
| |
| The poplars and the pines are hers | 25 |
| His are the sands and wind; | |
| Sometimes his desperate breathing blurs | |
| The air till she grows blind. | |
| She clutches up the dune to seek | |
| Sometime his throat to kill; | 30 |
| And always the troubled waters speak, | |
| Always the sea-gulls shrill. | |
| |
| The wind is fellow once with Death, | |
| Storming against the land; | |
| He howls across the hills, his breath | 35 |
| Burdened with snow and sand. | |
| The wind is fellow once with Life, | |
| Sweeping against the sea, | |
| Sweeping across the waves in strife | |
| With Death for enemy. | 40 |
| |
| Yet life and death and land and lake— | |
| To him what things are these? | |
| Whether the sand-dunes shoreward shake, | |
| Fleeing the broken seas, | |
| Whether the water be as glass | 45 |
| Or wild beasts without chains, | |
| They change and shift and scud and pass, | |
| Only the wind remains! | |
| |
| Only the wind! The dead leaves flee, | |
| Like smoke the blue lake fades, | 50 |
| The hills flow down into the sea, | |
| And night and day like shades | |
| About a carried lantern run, | |
| Jigging alternately, | |
| And star and moon and bolted sun | 55 |
| Slide crazily in the sky. | |
| |
| O God! The whole world, like the dunes, | |
| Dances fantastic-wise | |
| Down to what end, before what tunes, | |
| Beneath what dancing skies! | 60 |
| And blown along like grains of sand | |
| Ourselves must whirl and flee | |
| Before a wind across the land | |
| Into what open sea! | |
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