free-verse20 lines

The Light That Never Was On Sea Or Land

O gone are now those eager great glad days of days, but I remember

Yet even yet the light that turned the saddest of sad hours to mirth;

I remember how elate I swung upon the thrusting bowsprits,

And how the sun in setting burned and made the earth all unlike earth.

O gone are now those mighty ships I haunted days and days together,

And gone the mighty men that sang as crawled the tall craft out to sea;

And fallen ev'n the forest tips and changed the eyes that watched their burning,

But still I hear that shout and clang, and still the old spell stirs in me.

And as to some poor ship close locked in water dense and dark and vile

The wind comes garrulous from afar and sets the idle masts a-quiver;

And ev'n to her so foully docked, swift as the sun's first beam at dawn

The sea-bird comes and like a star wheels by and down along the river;--

So to me the full wind blows from far strange waters echoingly,

And faint forgotten longings break the fast-sealed pools within my breast;

So to me when sunset glows the scream comes of the white sea-bird,

And all those ancient raptures wake and wakes again the old unrest.

I see again the masts that crowd and part lie trees in living wind,

I hear again the shouts and cries and lip-lap of the waveless pool;

I see again the smalling cloud of sail that into distance fades,

I am again the boy whose eyes with tears of grief and hope are full.