So some twilight, when your roses
    Are all blown and it is June,
    You will turn your blue eyes seaward
    Through the white dusk of the moon,

    Wondering, as that far sea-cry
    Comes upon the wind again,
    And you hear the Shadow Boatswain
    Piping to his shadow men.

THE MASTER OF THE ISLES

    There is rumor in Dark Harbor,
    And the folk are all astir;
    For a stranger in the offing
    Draws them down to gaze at her,

    In the gray of early morning,
    Black against the orange streak,
    Making in below the ledges,
    With no colors at her peak.

    Something makes their hearts uneasy
    As they watch the long black hull,
    For she brings the storm behind her
    While before her there is lull.

    With no pilot and unspoken,
    Where the dancing breakers are,
    Presently she veers and races
    In across the roaring bar,—­

    Rounds and luffs and comes to anchor,
    While the wharf begins to throng. 
    Silence falls upon the women. 
    And misgiving stirs the strong.

    Then with some obscure foreboding,
    As a gray-haired watcher smiles,
    They perceive the fearless captain
    Is the Master of the Isles.

    They recall the bleak December
    Many streaming years ago,
    When the stranger had been sighted
    Driving shoreward with the snow;

    When the Master came among them
    With his calm and courtly pride,
    And had sailed away at sundown
    With pale Dora for his bride;

    How again he came one summer
    When the herring schools were late,
    And had cleared before the morning
    With old Alec’s son for mate.

    There was glamour with the Master;
    He had tales of far-off seas;
    But his habit and demeanor
    Were of other lands than these.

    He had never made the Harbor
    But there sailed away with him
    Wife or child or friend or lover,
    Leaving eyes to strain and swim,—­

    Strain and wait for their returning;
    Yet they never had come back;
    For the pale wake of the Master
    Is a wandering, fading track.

    Just beyond our utmost fathom
    Is the anchorage we crave,
    But the Master knows the soundings
    By the reach of every wave.

    Just beyond the last horizon,
    Vague upon the weather-gleam,
    Loom the Faroff Isles forever,
    The tradition of a dream.

    There a white and brooding summer
    Haunts upon the gray sea-plain,
    Where the gray sea-winds are quiet
    At the sources of the rain.

    There where all world-weary dreamers
    Get them forth to their release,
    Lie the colonies of the kindred,
    In the provinces of peace.