TO A FRIEND OF BOYHOOD LOST AT SEA

O warm blue sky and dazzling sea,

Where have you hid my friend from me?

The white-chalk coast, the leagues of surf

Laugh to the May-light, now as then,

And violets in the short sweet turf

Make fragmentary heavens again,

And sea-born wings of rustling snow

Pass and re-pass as long ago.

Old friend, do you remember yet

The days when secretly we met

In that old harbor years a-back,

Where I admired your billowing walk,

Or in that perilous fishing smack

What tarry oaths perfumed your talk,

The sails we set, the ropes we spliced,

The raw potato that we sliced,

For mackerel-bait — and how it shines

Far down, at end of the taut lines!—

And the great catch we made that day,

Loading our boat with rainbows, quick

And quivering, while you smoked your clay

And I took home your “Deadwood Dick”

In yellow and red, when day was done

And you took home my Stevenson?

Not leagues, as when you sailed the deep,

But only some frail bars of sleep

Sever us now! Methinks you still

Recall, as I, in dreams, the quay,

The little port below the hill:

And all the changes of the sea,

Like some great music, can but roll

Our lives still nearer to the goal.