The blue, blue sea, And the drone of waves, And the wheeling swallows, And the sun on the opal sails, And the misty and salt-bleached headlands, And the milkweed thick at my feet, And the milkweed held in the hand of a child Who dreams on the misty cliff-edge, Watching the fading sails And the noonday blue Of the lonely sea!
Was it all years ago, Or was it but yesterday? I only know that the scent Of the milkweed brings it back, Back with a strangle of tears: The child and the misty headlands, The drone of the dark blue sea, And the opal sails In the sun!
I am tired of the dust And the fever and noise And the meaningless faces of men; And I want to go home! Oh, day after day I get thinking of home Where the black firs fringe the skyline, And the birds wheel down the silence, And the hemlocks whisper peace, And the hill-winds cool the blood, And the dusk is crowned with glory, And the lone horizon softens, And the world's at home with God! Oh, I want to go there! _I want to go home!_
A rind of light hangs low On the rim of the world; A sound of feet disturbs The quiet of the cell Where a rope and a beam looms high At the end of the yard.
But in the dusk Of that walled yard waits a woman; And as the thing from its cell, Still guarded and chained and bound, Crosses that little space, Silent, for ten brief steps, A woman hangs on his neck.
_And that walk from a cell to a sleep Is known as Life, And those ten dark steps Of tangled rapture and tears Men still call Love._
Some day, O Seeker of Dreams, they will seek even us! Some day they will wake, Fellow Singer, and hunger and want For the Ways to the Lonelier Height! So let us, Shy Weaver of Beauty, take heart, For out of their dust they will call to us yet! Let us wait, and sing, and be wise, As the sea has waited and sung, As the hills through the night have been wise! For we are the Bringers of Light, and the Voices of Love, Aye, we are the Soothers of Pain, the Appeasers of Death, The Dusk and the Star and the Gleam and the Loneliest Peak! And when they have found and seen, and know not whither they trend, They will come to us, crying aloud like a child in the night; And when they have learned of our lips, Still back to our feet they will grope For that ultimate essence and core of all song, To usher them empty and naked, then, out to the unanswering stars, Where Silence and Dreaming and Music are one!
