id."

* * * * *

Ah! God, if she had known.

Alone, alone, alone,
She who had longed for love by stealth
As a gold-mad miser longs for wealth
Or a poet longs for fame,
Her seared numb body had just an ache
For a pitiful pitiless last mistake
And the smirch upon her name.

VI

A shrill chill wind blew out of the West
As a young child wails for a Mother's breast,
It broke the swell and whitened each crest
And moaned "I come with a strange behest;
The dead are happier. They are at rest
Alone, alone, alone,
Each under a graven stone,
Where the poppies are red
In the homes of the dead
And their scarlet petals spill
And the seabirds scream
As they wheel and gleam
And the seawinds whistle shrill.
The dead are happy, for they are free
They have said farewell to misery,
Alone
Each under a stone;
But the hearts which mourn for a faithless friend
Can never, never, never mend,
And so they break for friendship's sake
Alone, alone, alone."

VII

The sea wind blew like a wild lament
For loved ones dying or love mis-spent
And still in her hollow of sand and bent
She lay alone, alone,
And stared out into the keening blast
Not heeding the future or mourning the past,
For past and future were one.

VIII

Ah! pity her, who needed it most--
But in the village along the coast
Are those who tremble and moan,
Seeming to wait alone
For a dreadful something unknown,
As the tempest travels gathering force
And sobs and howls and raves and roars
And laughs like a demon band,
And the great waves clamber into the bay
With voices triumphant which seem to say
"Hurrah! Hurrah! we have found a prey
But we seek another on land."

Ah! shivering fisherwife in your shawl,
Perhaps they have found a prey
Who leap and shout in the bay,
And you will weep for the grief of it all
For many and many a day.

IX

All night the moon peered wan and pale
Thro' rifts in a scudding storm-rent veil
O'er a moving mountainous waste.
All night did the climbers rear and roar
And fall with a crash upon the shore,
League on league of them coming in haste
Till they broke and leapt no more,
Leaping and shouting until they broke
Upon the screaming shore