Gulls on the wind,

      Crying! crying!

      Are you the ghosts

      Of Erin's dead?

      Of the forlorn

      Whose days went sighing

      Ever for Beauty

      That ever fled?

      Ever for Light

      That never kindled?

      Ever for Song

      No lips have sung?

      Ever for Joy

      That ever dwindled?

      Ever for Love that stung?

      Last night I slipt from the banks of dream

      And swam in the currents of God,

      On a tide where His fairies were at play,

      Catching salt tears in their little white hands,

      For human hearts;

      And dancing, dancing, in gala bands,

      On the currents of God;

      And singing, singing: —

      There is no wind blows here or spray —

      Wind upon us!

      Only the waters ripple away

      Under our feet as we gather tears.

      God has made mortals for the years,

      Us for alway!

      God has made mortals full of fears,

      Fears for the night and fears for the day.

      If they would free them of grief that sears,

      If they would keep what love endears,

      If they would lay no more lilies on biers —

      Let them say!

      For we are swift to enchant and tire

      Time's will!

      Our feet are wiser than all desire,

      Our song is better than faith or fame;

      To whom it is given no ill e'er came,

      Who has it not grows chill!

      Who has it not grows laggard and lame,

      Nor knows that the world is a Minstrel's lyre,

      Smitten and never still!..

      Last night on the currents of God.

      I long to see the solan-goose

      Wing over Ailsa crag

      At dusk again – or Girvan gulls at dawn;

      To see the osprey grayly glide

      The winds of Kamasaig:

      For grayness now my heart is set upon.

      The grayness of sea-spaces where

      There's loneliness alone,

      Save for the wings that sweep it with unrest,

      Save for the hunger-cries that sound

      And die into a moan,

      Save for the moaning hunger in my breast.

      For grayness is the hue of all

      In life that is not lies.

      A thousand years of tears are in my heart;

      And only in their mystery

      Can I be truly wise:

      From light and laughter follies only start.

      I long to see the mists again

      Above the tumbling tide

      Of Ailsa, at the coming of the night.

      There's weariness and emptiness

      And soul unsatisfied

      Forever in the places of delight.

      What memories have I of it,

      The sea, continent-clasping,

      The sea whose spirit is a sorcery,

      The sea whose magic foaming is immortal!

      What memories have I of it thro the years!

      What memories of its shores!..

      Of shadowy headlands doomed to stay the storm;

      And red cliffs clawing ever into the tides;

      Of misty moors whose royal heather purples;

      Of channeled marshes, village-nesting hills;

      Of crags wind-eaten, homes of hungry gulls;

      Of bays —

      Where sails float furled, resting softly at harbour,

      Until, winging again, they sweep away.

      What memories have I, too,

      Of faring out at dawn upon tameless waters,

      Upon the infinite wasted yearning of them,

      While winds, the mystic harp-strings of the world,

      Were sounding sweet farewells;

      While coast and lighthouse tower were fading fast,

      And from me all the world slipped like a garment.

      What memories of mid-deeps!..

      Of heaving on thro haunted vasts of foam,

      Thro swaying terrors of tormented tides;

      While the wind, no more singing, took to raving,

      In rhythmic infinite words,

      A chantey ancient and immeasurable

      Concerning man and God.

      What memories of fog-spaces —

      Wide leaden deserts of dim wavelessness,

      Smooth porpoise-broken glass

      As gray as a dream upon despair's horizon;

      What sailing soft till lo the shroud was lifted

      And suddenly there came, as a great joy,

      The blue sublimity of summer skies,

      The azure mystery of happy heavens,

      The passionate sweet parley of the breeze,

      And dancing waves – that lured us on and on

      Past islands above whose verdant mountain-heads

      Enchanted clouds were hanging,

      And whence wild spices wandered;

      Past iridescent reefs and vessels bound

      For