gain--
I who have known but heaving hues
Of wind and rain--

Still I shall envy no man's lot,
For I have held this great,
Never in whines to have forgot
That Fate is Fate.

IMPERTURBABLE

Three times the fog rolled in today, a silent shroud,
From which the breakers ran like ghosts, moaning and tumbling.
Three times a startled sea-bird cried aloud,
On the wind stumbling.

But I cast my net with never a fear, tho wraiths in me
And birds of wild unrest were stirring and starting and crying.
For I knew that under the sway of every sea
There is calm lying.

WASTE

I flung a wild rose into the sea,
I know not why.
For swinging there on a rathe rose-tree,
By the scented bay and barberry,
Its petals gave all their sweet to me,
As I passed by.

And yet I flung it into the tide,
And went my way.
I climbed the gray rocks, far and wide,
And many a cove of peace I tried,
With none of them all to be satisfied,
The whole long day.

For I had wasted a beautiful thing,
Which might have won
Each passing heart to pause and sing,
On the sea-path there, of its blossoming.
And who wastes beauty shall feel want's sting,
As I had done.

RESURGENCE

I was content, O Sea, to be free for a space from striving,
Content as the brown weed is, at rest on rocks in the sun,
When the salt tide is out, and the surf no more is riving
At its roots, or swirling and bidding it sway where the white waves run.

I was content--with life, and love, and a little over;
A little achieved of the much that is given to men to do.
But now with your tidal strife do you come again, vain rover,
And tell of vastitudes, to be sailed, or sounded, anew.

Now again do you surge. And the fathomless tides of thinking,
Of wanting, waiting, despairing--or daring--with you come;
The inner tides of the soul, that had ebbed with slumberous shrinking,
But now are bursting again, thro the caves of it long numb.

So vainly I lie on the cliff with the blissful Blue above me
And listless sated gulls afloat below on the swells,
For I am soothless, sateless, because of desires that shove me
Out and away with the winds, on quests no distance quells!

LIFE'S ANSWER

A stroke of lightning stabbed the storm-black sea,