Till fourfold morning rise
        Of starshine on his eyes,
Dawn of the spheres that brand steep heaven across
At height of night with semblance of a cross
        Whose grace and ghostly glory
        Poured heaven on purgatory
Seeing with their flamelets risen all heaven grow glad
For love thereof it had
And lovely joy of loving; so may these
Make bright with welcome now their southern seas.

        O happy stars, whose mirth
        The saddest soul on earth
That ever soared and sang found strong to bless,
Lightening his life’s harsh load of heaviness
        With comfort sown like seed
        In dream though not in deed
On sprinkled wastes of darkling thought divine,
Let all your lights now shine
With all as glorious gladness on his eyes
For whom indeed and not in dream they rise.

        As those great twins of air
        Hailed once with oldworld prayer
Of all folk alway faring forth by sea,
So now may these for grace and guidance be,
        To guard his sail and bring
        Again to brighten spring
The face we look for and the hand we lack
Still, till they light him back,
As welcome as to first discovering eyes
Their light rose ever, soon on his to rise.

        As parting now he goes
        From snow-time back to snows,
So back to spring from summer may next year
Restore him, and our hearts receive him here,
        The best good gift that spring
        Had ever grace to bring
At fortune’s happiest hour of star-blest birth
Back to love’s homebright earth,
To eyes with eyes that commune, hand with hand,
And the old warm bosom of all our mother-land.

        Earth and sea-wind and sea
        And stars and sunlight be
Alike all prosperous for him, and all hours
Have all one heart, and all that heart as ours. 
        All things as good as strange
        Crown all the seasons’ change
With changing flower and compensating fruit
From one year’s ripening root;
Till next year bring us, roused at spring’s recall, A heartier flower and goodlier fruit than all.

March 26, 1880.

BY THE NORTH SEA

TO WALTER THEODORE WATTS.

’We are what suns and winds and waters make us.’—­LANDOR.

Sea, wind, and sun, with light and sound and breath
  The spirit of man fulfilling—­these create
  That joy wherewith man’s life grown passionate
Gains heart to hear and sense to read and faith
To know the secret word our Mother saith
  In silence, and to see, though doubt wax great,
  Death as the shadow cast by life on fate,
Passing, whose shade we call the shadow of death.

Brother, to whom our Mother as to me
  Is dearer than all dreams of days undone,
This song I give you of the sovereign three
  That are as life and sleep and death are, one: 
A song the sea-wind gave me from the sea,
  Where nought of man’s endures before the sun._