1849.

THE SANDS OF DEE

’O Mary, go and call the cattle home,
      And call the cattle home,
      And call the cattle home
   Across the sands of Dee;’
The western wind was wild and dank with foam,
   And all alone went she.

The western tide crept up along the sand,
      And o’er and o’er the sand,
      And round and round the sand,
   As far as eye could see. 
The rolling mist came down and hid the land: 
   And never home came she.

’Oh! is it weed, or fish, or floating hair—­
      A tress of golden hair,
      A drowned maiden’s hair
   Above the nets at sea? 
Was never salmon yet that shone so fair
   Among the stakes on Dee.’

They rowed her in across the rolling foam,
      The cruel crawling foam,
      The cruel hungry foam,
   To her grave beside the sea: 
But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home
   Across the sands of Dee.

Eversley, 1849.

THE TIDE ROCK

How sleeps yon rock, whose half-day’s bath is done. 
With broad blight side beneath the broad bright sun,
Like sea-nymph tired, on cushioned mosses sleeping. 
Yet, nearer drawn, beneath her purple tresses
From drooping brows we find her slowly weeping. 
   So many a wife for cruel man’s caresses
   Must inly pine and pine, yet outward bear
   A gallant front to this world’s gaudy glare.

Ilfracombe, 1849.

ELEGIACS

Wearily stretches the sand to the surge, and the surge to the cloudland;
Wearily onward I ride, watching the water alone. 
Not as of old, like Homeric Achilles, ??de? ya???,
Joyous knight-errant of God, thirsting for labour and strife;
No more on magical steed borne free through the regions of ether,
But, like the hack which I ride, selling my sinew for gold. 
Fruit-bearing autumn is gone; let the sad quiet winter hang o’er me—­
What were the spring to a soul laden with sorrow and shame? 
Blossoms would fret me with beauty; my heart has no time to bepraise them;
Gray rock, bough, surge, cloud, waken no yearning within. 
Sing not, thou sky-lark above! even angels pass hushed by the weeper. 
Scream on, ye sea-fowl! my heart echoes your desolate cry. 
Sweep the dry sand on, thou wild wind, to drift o’er the shell and the sea-
weed;
Sea-weed and shell, like my dreams, swept down the pitiless tide. 
Just is the wave which uptore us; ’tis Nature’s own law which condemns us;
Woe to the weak who, in pride, build on the faith of the sand! 
Joy to the oak of the mountain:  he trusts to the might of the rock-clefts;
Deeply he mines, and in peace feeds on the wealth of the stone.

Morte Sands, Devonshire,
February 1849.