Stella Maris

Why is it I remember yet

You, of all women one has met

In random wayfare, as one meets

The chance romances of the streets,

The Juliet of a night? I know

Your heart holds many a Romeo.

And I, who call to mind your face

In so serene a pausing-place,

Where the bright pure expanse of sea,

The shadowy shore's austerity,

Seems a reproach to you and me,

I too have sought on many a breast

The ecstasy of love's unrest,

I too have had my dreams, and met

(Ah me!) how many a Juliet.

Why is it, then, that I recall

You, neither first nor last of all?

For, surely as I see tonight

The glancing of the lighthouse light,

Against the sky, across the bay,

As turn by turn it falls my way,

So surely do I see your eyes

Out of the empty night arise,

Child, you arise and smile to me

Out of the night, out of the sea,

The Nereid of a moment there,

And is it seaweed in your hair?

O lost and wrecked, how long ago,

Out of the drownèd past, I know,

You come to call me, come to claim

My share of your delicious shame.

Child, I remember, and can tell,

One night we loved each other well;

And one night's love, at least or most,

Is not so small a thing to boast.

You were adorable, and I

Adored you to infinity,

That nuptial night too briefly borne

To the oblivion of morn.

Oh, no oblivion! for I feel

Your lips deliriously steal

Along my neck and fasten there;

I feel the perfume of your hair,

And your soft breast that heaves and dips,

Desiring my desirous lips,

And that ineffable delight

When souls turn bodies, and unite

In the intolerable, the whole

Rapture of the embodied soul.

That joy was ours, we passed it by;

You have forgotten me, and I

Remember you thus strangely, won

An instant from oblivion.

And I, remembering, would declare

That joy, not shame, is ours to share,

Joy that we had the will and power,

In spite of fate, to snatch one hour,

Out of vague nights, and days at strife,

So infinitely full of life.

And 'tis for this I see you rise,

A wraith, with starlight in your eyes,

Here, where the drowsy-minded mood

Is one with Nature's solitude;

For this, for this, you come to me

Out of the night, out of the sea.