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, And the children stood watching them out of the town; For men must work, and women must weep, Three wives sat up in the light-house tower, But men must work, and women must weep, 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; Weltered in burning haze; all airs were dead; And sighed for sleep, for sleep that would not hear, |