THE RAVEN'S SHADOW

Seabird, elemental sprite,

Moulded of the sun and spray —

Raven, dreary flake of night

Drifting in the eye of day —

What in common have ye two,

Meeting‘ twixt the blue and blue?

Thou to eastward carriest

The keen savour of the foam,—

Thou dost bear unto the west

Fragrance from thy woody home,

Where perchance a house is thine

Odorous of the oozy pine.

Eastward thee thy proper cares,

Things of mighty moment, call;

Thee to westward thine affairs

Summon, weighty matters all:

I, where land and sea contest,

Watch you eastward, watch you west,

Till, in snares of fancy caught,

Mystically changed ye seem,

And the bird becomes a thought,

And the thought becomes a dream,

And the dream, outspread on high,

Lords it o'er the abject sky.

Surely I have known before

Phantoms of the shapes ye be —

Haunters of another shore

‘ Leaguered by another sea.

There my wanderings night and morn

Reconcile me to the bourn.

There the bird of happy wings

Wafts the ocean-news I crave;

Rumours of an isle he brings

Gemlike on the golden wave:

But the baleful beak and plume

Scatter immelodious gloom.

Though the flow'rs be faultless made,

Perfectly to live and die —

Though the bright clouds bloom and fade

Flow'rlike‘ midst a meadowy sky —

Where this raven roams forlorn

Veins of midnight flaw the morn.

He not less will croak and croak

As he ever caws and caws,

Till the starry dance he broke,

Till the sphery pæan pause,

And the universal chime

Falter out of tune and time.

Coils the labyrinthine sea

Duteous to the lunar will,

But some discord stealthily

Vexes the world-ditty still,

And the bird that caws and caws

Clasps creation with his claws.