VOYAGES 
i 
—And yet this great wink of eternity, 
Of rimless floods, unfettered leewardings, 
Samite sheeted and processioned where 
Her undinal vast belly moonward bends 
Laughing the wrapt inflections of our love: 
Take this Sea, whose diapasen knolls 
On scrolls of silver snowy sentences, 
The sceptred terror of whose sessions rends 
(As her demeaners motion well or ill) 
All but the pieties of lovers’ hands. 
And onward, as bells off San Salvador 
Salute the crocus lustres of the stars, 
In these poincetta meadows of her tides,— 
Adagies of islands, O my Prodigal, 
Complete the dark confessions her veins spell. 
Mark how her turning shoulders wind the hours, 
And hasten while her penniless rich palms 
Pass superscription of bent foam and wave,— 
Hasten, while they are true,—sleep, death, desire, 
Close round one instant in one floating flower. 
Bind us in time, O Seasons clear, and awe. 
O minstrel galleons of Carib fire, 
Bequeath us to no earthly shore until 
Is answered in the vortex of our grave 
The seal’s wide spindrift gaze toward paradise. 
II 
Infinite consanguinity it bears— 
This tendered theme of you that light 
Retrieves from sea plains where the sky 
Resigns a breast that every wave enthrones, 
While ribboned water lanes I wind 
Are laved and scattered with no stroke 
Wide from your side, whereto this hour 
The sea lifts, also, reliquary hands. 
And so, admitted through black swollen gates 
That must arrest all distance otherwise,—