--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 diapason knells
On
scrolls of silver snowy sentences,
The
sceptred terror of whose sessions rends
As
her demeanors 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 poinsettia meadows of her tides,--
Adagios
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.
