in shrill-voiced
          emigrant number,
And calls to the pilot to hang up his rudder again for the season, and
          slumber;
And then weave a cloak for Orestes the thief, lest he strip men of theirs
          if it freezes. 
And again thereafter the kite reappearing announces a change in the
          breezes,
And that here is the season for shearing your sheep of their spring wool. 
          Then does the swallow
Give you notice to sell your greatcoat, and provide something light for
          the heat that’s to follow. 
Thus are we as Ammon or Delphi unto you, Dodona, nay, Phoebus Apollo.  For, as first ye come all to get auguries of birds, even such is in all
          things your carriage,
Be the matter a matter of trade, or of earning your bread, or of any
          one’s marriage. 
And all things ye lay to the charge of a bird that belong to discerning
          prediction: 
Winged fame is a bird, as you reckon:  you sneeze, and the sign’s as a
          bird for conviction: 
All tokens are ‘birds’ with you—­sounds too, and lackeys, and donkeys. 
          Then must it not follow
That we are to you all as the manifest godhead that speaks in prophetic
          Apollo?

October 19, 1880.

OFF SHORE.

When the might of the summer
Is most on the sea;
When the days overcome her
With joy but to be,
With rapture of royal enchantment, and sorcery that sets her not free,

But for hours upon hours
As a thrall she remains
Spell-bound as with flowers
And content in their chains,
And her loud steeds fret not, and lift not a lock of their deep white
manes;

Then only, far under
In the depths of her hold,
Some gleam of its wonder
Man’s eye may behold,
Its wild-weed forests of crimson and russet and olive and gold.

Still deeper and dimmer
And goodlier they glow
For the eyes of the swimmer
Who scans them below
As he crosses the zone of their flowerage that knows not of sunshine and
snow.

Soft blossomless frondage
And foliage that gleams
As to prisoners in bondage
The light of their dreams,
The desire of a dawn unbeholden, with hope on the wings of its beams.

Not as prisoners entombed
Waxen haggard and wizen,
But consoled and illumed
In the depths of their prison
With delight of the light everlasting and vision of dawn on them risen,

From the banks and the beds
Of the waters divine
They lift up their heads
And the flowers of them shine
Through the splendour of darkness that clothes them of water that glimmers
like wine.

Bright bank over bank
Making glorious the gloom,
Soft rank upon rank,
Strange bloom after bloom,
They kindle the liquid low twilight, the dusk of the dim sea’s womb.