III.

"Oh!" is it weed, or fish, or floating hair

A tress o' 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."

IV.

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 !

THE THREE FISHERS.

THREE fishers went sailing out into the West,
Out into the West as the sun went down ;
Each thought on the woman who loved him the best,

And the children stood watching them out of the town;

For men must work, and women must weep,
And there's little to earn, and many to keep,
Though the harbour bar be moaning.

Three wives sat up in the light-house tower,
And they trimmed the lamps as the sun went down,
They looked at the squall, and they looked at the shower,
And the night rack came rolling up ragged and brown!

But men must work, and women must weep,
Though storms be sudden, and waters deep,
And the harbour bar be moaning.

Three corpses lay out on the shining sands

In the morning gleam as the tide went down,

And the women are weeping and wringing their hands For those who will never come back to the town;

For men must work, and women must weep,

And the sooner it's over, the sooner to sleep

And good-bye to the bar and its moaning.

WEARILY STRETCHES THE SAND.

WEARILY stretches the sand to the surge, and the surge to the cloudland;

Wearily onward I ride, watching the wild wave alone. Not as of old, like Homeric Achilles, kudeï yauv,

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 ?

Green leaves would fret me with beauty; my heart has no time to bepraise them;

Gray rock, bough, surge, cloud - these wake 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.

SAPPHO.

SHE lay among the myrtles on the cliff;
Above her glared the noon; beneath, the sea.
Upon the white horizon Atho's peak

Weltered in burning haze; all airs were dead;
The cicale slept among the tamarisk's hair;
The birds sat dumb and drooping. Far below
The lazy sea-weed glistened in the sun;
The lazy sea-fowl dried their steaming wings;
The lazy swell crept whispering up the ledge,
And sank again. Great Pan was laid to rest;
And Mother Earth watched by him as he slept,
And hushed her myriad children for awhile.
She lay among the myrtles on the cliff;

And sighed for sleep, for sleep that would not hear,
But left her tossing still; for night and day
A mighty hunger yearned within her heart,
Till all her veins ran fever, and her cheek,
Her long thin hands, and ivory-channel'd feet,
Were wasted with the wasting of her soul.
Then peevishly she flung her on her face,
And hid her eyeballs from the blinding glare,