Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/114

And the blown spray bedewed me: whence my heart,
Like a sea-shell, hath in it sounding seas,
Echoing forever. There my childhood grew
With pure attachments bound, spontaneous joys,
To the sea's being; all the wave endues
With light and color shared my boyhood blood,
And made itself the framework of my thoughts
And channel of my feelings; and, ofttimes,
Awe came upon me, unintelligible,
In presence of the simple things of earth,
The dawn, the breeze, the stars, beside the sea.
In the long years of that sea-shepherding
There was one hour I nevermore forgot.
I stood amid the radiance of the noon,
Flooded with beauty; the bright, heavenly curve
Domed the blue deep, and from light's centre poured
On me the benediction of the seas
I had so loved; its winds, its blowing tides,
Voices mysterious, touch and sight divine,
The crests of sunset flung far down the west,
The rosy shallop of the breaking dawn
Breasting the island-breakers, dark a-gleam,—
Uncounted aspects, mingling all their grace,—
Ensphered me; and the gray sea, golden-tongued,
Upgathering invisible mystery,
Flashed through me, wave on wave, its effluence,