A Ballad of the Golden Hind.

We have left our love at home dreaming, in a Devon combe,
Of the days before the world was our desire,—
When the froth-flecked toiling team, and the sickle's August gleam
Were the life of which our hearts could never tire.
But we watched the wash of the westward seas,
And the trail of the falling gold,
Till the hunger of soul's unrest was born
For the magic no lips had told.

* * * *

To the rippling flood-tide plash, to the swung oars' feathered-flash,
To the silver of the sail aslant the blue,
And the strange talk on the quay where they go down to the sea,—
We have lost our heart: so seek we luck or rue.
It's a wring of the hand of friend or kin,
Then the race of a clean, keen wake
All astern to the softly-cradling coast
And the fields that our feet forsake.

* * * *

For the sailing seagull's cry, and the quivering fenceless sky,
And the glow where grand Orion wills his bath,
And the combers' rock-flung speech, and the shining Channel reach;—
These be things that win a man's thought from the hearth.
Oh, the pulse of the summer-sun-lit seas,
And the call of the spacious morn !
We will follow the fire of sunset clouds,
We will hide in the mists of dawn !

* * * *

Be the coast-fog creeping blind;—ours, the frolicking fresh wind
Athwart the untamed horses that he rides !
Ours, the music of the spars swinging under stern and stars
As the lithe Hind shakes the sea-pack from her sides.
For the stretch of the drawing cloud aloft,
For the hiss of the baffled crest,—
We have prayed as we prayed for the sapphire South,
And the breath of the waiting West.

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So we chase the Summer south to the flooding Plata-mouth,
And we thread the windy straits,—forlorn—alone;
Taking all and giving naught (for our love of Philip's Court);
Running league-long to the rich sun's island-throne.
To the land aflush with the fragrant flower,
To a glamour of afternoon,
To the languid lift of a lazy swell,
To the thrall of a tropic moon.

* * * *

In the witchery of flight through the deep-arched lustrous night,
We have drained brimm'd draughts of beauty to the lees;
Wooded cove and island creek, sun-searched city, staring peak—
These have bought for our soul's hunger a surcease.
And the hush on a windless, endless sea,
The sights of the utter Pale,—
Have wooed with a wonder all wildly new
Till the wonder is overstate.

* * * *

Out beyond the bounds of grace where we looked life in the face,
He flung to us his gifts of strength and power;
And the bluff health of the breeze, and the secrets of the seas,
We have taken for our deathless English dower.
So we beat and clew from the Southern Cross
To the track of the homeward Wain,
With the love of tide and shoal and send.
And the world for our fighting gain.

* * * *

With a whisper overside when the hazy headlands spied,
With a heart all eager at the wealth before,
Then abeam the oldtime Hoe and the green none else may show,—
It is port and home and Devonfields once more.
But we watch the wash of the westward seas,
Feel the call of the spacious morn.
And a pang for the full free life awakes—
And Ho ! for the cloudy bourne.