Voyages II

—And yet this great wink of eternity,

Of rimless floods, unfettered leewardings,

Samite sheeted and processioned

Her undinal vast belly moonward bends,

Laughing the wrapt inflections of our love;

Take this Sea, whose diapason

On scrolls of silver snowy sentences,

The sceptred terror of whose sessions

As her demeanors motion well or ill,

All but the pieties of lovers' hands.

And onward, as bells off San

Salute the crocus lustres of the stars,

In these poinsettia meadows of her tides,—Adagios of islands,

O my Prodigal,

Complete the dark confessions her veins spell.

Mark how her turning shoulders wind the hours,

And hasten while her penniless rich

Pass superscription of bent foam and wave,—Hasten, while they are true,—sleep, death, desire,

Close round one instant in one floating flower.

Bind us in time,

O Seasons clear, and awe.

O minstrel galleons of Carib fire,

Bequeath us to no earthly shore

Is answered in the vortex of our

The seal's wide spindrift gaze toward paradise.