CROSSING THE TROPICS From “The Saya-y-Manto."

While now the Pole Star sinks from sight
  The Southern Cross it climbs the sky;
But losing thee, my love, my light,
O bride but for one bridal night,
  The loss no rising joys supply.

Love, love, the Trade Winds urge abaft,
And thee, from thee, they steadfast waft.

By day the blue and silver sea
  And chime of waters blandly fanned—­
Nor these, nor Gama’s stars to me
May yield delight since still for thee
  I long as Gama longed for land.

I yearn, I yearn, reverting turn,
My heart it streams in wake astern
When, cut by slanting sleet, we swoop
  Where raves the world’s inverted year,
If roses all your porch shall loop,
Not less your heart for me will droop
  Doubling the world’s last outpost drear.

O love, O love, these oceans vast: 
Love, love, it is as death were past!

THE BERG A Dream

I SAW a ship of martial build
(Her standards set, her brave apparel on)
Directed as by madness mere
Against a stolid iceberg steer,
Nor budge it, though the infatuate ship went
    down. 
The impact made huge ice-cubes fall
Sullen, in tons that crashed the deck;
But that one avalanche was all
No other movement save the foundering
    wreck.

Along the spurs of ridges pale,
Not any slenderest shaft and frail,
A prism over glass—­green gorges lone,
Toppled; nor lace of traceries fine,
Nor pendant drops in grot or mine
Were jarred, when the stunned ship went
    down. 
Nor sole the gulls in cloud that wheeled
Circling one snow-flanked peak afar,
But nearer fowl the floes that skimmed
And crystal beaches, felt no jar. 
No thrill transmitted stirred the lock
Of jack-straw needle-ice at base;
Towers undermined by waves—­the block
Atilt impending—­kept their place. 
Seals, dozing sleek on sliddery ledges
Slipt never, when by loftier edges
Through very inertia overthrown,
The impetuous ship in bafflement went down. 
Hard Berg (methought), so cold, so vast,
With mortal damps self-overcast;
Exhaling still thy dankish breath—­
Adrift dissolving, bound for death;
Though lumpish thou, a lumbering one—­
A lumbering lubbard loitering slow,
Impingers rue thee and go down,
Sounding thy precipice below,
Nor stir the slimy slug that sprawls
Along thy dense stolidity of walls.

THE ENVIABLE ISLES From “Rammon."

Through storms you reach them and from
    storms are free. 
  Afar descried, the foremost drear in hue,
But, nearer, green; and, on the marge, the sea
  Makes thunder low and mist of rainbowed
    dew.

But, inland, where the sleep that folds the hills
A dreamier sleep, the trance of God, instills—­
  On uplands hazed, in wandering airs
    aswoon,
Slow-swaying palms salute love’s cypress tree
  Adown in vale where pebbly runlets croon
A song to lull all sorrow and all glee.