CHANGED VOICES

Last night the seawind was to me
A metaphor of liberty,
  And every wave along the beach
A starlit music seemed to be.

To-day the seawind is to me
A fettered soul that would be free,
  And dumbly striving after speech
The tides yearn landward painfully.

To-morrow how shall sound for me
The changing voice of wind and sea? 
  What tidings shall be borne of each? 
What rumour of what mystery?

A SUNSET

Westward a league the city lay, with one
Cloud’s imminent umbrage o’er it:  when behold,
    The incendiary sun
  Dropped from the womb o’ the vapour, rolled
’Mongst huddled towers and temples, ’twixt them set
Infinite ardour of candescent gold,
    Encompassed minaret
  And terrace and marmoreal spire
With conflagration:  roofs enfurnaced, yet
Unmolten,—­columns and cupolas flanked with fire,
    Yet standing unconsumed
  Of the fierce fervency,—­and higher
Than all, their fringes goldenly illumed,
Dishevelled clouds, like massed empurpled smoke
    From smouldering forges fumed: 
  Till suddenly the bright spell broke
With the sun sinking through some palace-floor
And vanishing wholly.  Then the city woke,
    Her mighty Fire-Dream o’er,
  As who from out a sleep is raised
Of terrible loveliness, lasting hardly more
Than one most monumental moment; dazed
    He looketh, having come
  Forth of one world and witless gazed
Into another:  ev’n so looked, for some
Brief while, the city—­amazed, immobile, dumb.

A SONG OF THREE SINGERS

I

  Wave and wind and willow-tree
Speak a speech that no man knoweth;
Tree that sigheth, wind that bloweth,
  Wave that floweth to the sea: 
  Wave and wind and willow-tree.

  Peerless perfect poets ye,
Singing songs all songs excelling,
Fine as crystal music dwelling
  In a welling fountain free: 
  Peerless perfect poets three!

II

  Wave and wind and willow-tree
Know not aught of poets’ rhyming,
Yet they make a silver-chiming
  Sunward-climbing minstrelsy,
  Soother than all songs that be.

  Blows the wind it knows not why,
Flows the wave it knows not whither,
And the willow swayeth hither
  Swayeth thither witlessly,
  Nothing knowing save to sigh.

LOVE’S ASTROLOGY

  I know not if they erred
    Who thought to see
The tale of all the times to be,
    Star-character’d;
  I know not, neither care,
  If fools or knaves they were.

  But this I know:  last night
    On me there shone
Two stars that made all stars look wan
    And shamed quite,
  Wherefrom the soul of me
  Divined her destiny.