The music dies not off the lyre
That lets no soul alive despair. 
Sleep strikes not dumb the breathless choir
Of waves whose note bids sorrow spare. 
As glad they sound, as fast they fare,
As when fate’s word first set them free
And gave them light and night to wear. 
Life yearns for solace toward the sea.

For there, though night and day conspire
To compass round with toil and snare
And changeless whirl of change, whose gyre
Draws all things deathwards unaware,
The spirit of life they scourge and scare,
Wild waves that follow on waves that flee
Laugh, knowing that yet, though earth despair,
Life yearns for solace toward the sea.

HEARTSEASE COUNTRY.

TO ISABEL SWINBURNE.

The far green westward heavens are bland,
  The far green Wiltshire downs are clear
As these deep meadows hard at hand: 
  The sight knows hardly far from near,
  Nor morning joy from evening cheer. 
In cottage garden-plots their bees
Find many a fervent flower to seize
  And strain and drain the heart away
From ripe sweet-williams and sweet-peas
  At every turn on every way.

But gladliest seems one flower to expand
  Its whole sweet heart all round us here;
’Tis Heartsease Country, Pansy Land. 
  Nor sounds nor savours harsh and drear
  Where engines yell and halt and veer
Can vex the sense of him who sees
One flower-plot midway, that for trees
  Has poles, and sheds all grimed or grey
For bowers like those that take the breeze
  At every turn on every way.

Content even there they smile and stand,
  Sweet thought’s heart-easing flowers, nor fear,
With reek and roaring steam though fanned,
  Nor shrink nor perish as they peer. 
  The heart’s eye holds not those more dear
That glow between the lanes and leas
Where’er the homeliest hand may please
  To bid them blossom as they may
Where light approves and wind agrees
  At every turn on every way.

Sister, the word of winds and seas
Endures not as the word of these
  Your wayside flowers whose breath would say
How hearts that love may find heart’s ease
  At every turn on every way.

A BALLAD OF APPEAL.

TO CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.

Song wakes with every wakening year
  From hearts of birds that only feel
Brief spring’s deciduous flower-time near: 
  And song more strong to help or heal
  Shall silence worse than winter seal? 
From love-lit thought’s remurmuring cave
The notes that rippled, wave on wave,
  Were clear as love, as faith were strong;
And all souls blessed the soul that gave
  Sweet water from the well of song.

All hearts bore fruit of joy to hear,
  All eyes felt mist upon them steal
For joy’s sake, trembling toward a tear,
  When, loud as marriage-bells that peal,
  Or flutelike soft, or keen like steel,
Sprang the sheer music; sharp or grave,
We heard the drift of winds that drave,
  And saw, swept round by ghosts in throng,
Dark rocks, that yielded, where they clave,
  Sweet water from the well of song.