The sky immense, bejewelled with rain of stars, Hangs over us: The stars like a sudden explosion powder the zenith With green and gold; North-east, south-west the Milky Way's pale streamers Flash past in flame; The sky is a swirling cataract Of fire, on high. Over us the sky up to the zenith Palpitates with tense glitter: About our keel the foam bubbles and curdles In phosphorescent joy. Flame boils up to meet down-rushing flame In the blue stillness. Aloft a single orange meteor Crashes down the sky. PART III. VARIATIONS (1) THE GROUNDSWELL. _Marcia Funebre._ With heavy doleful clamour, hour on hour, and day on day, The muddy groundswell lifts and breaks and falls and slides away. The cold and naked wind runs shivering over the sands, Salt are its eyes, open its mouth, its brow wet, blue its hands. It finds naught but a starving gull whose wings trail at its side, And the dull battered wreckage, grey jetsam of the tide. The lifeless chilly slaty sky with no blue hope is lit, A rusty waddling steamer plants a smudge of smoke on it. Stupidly stand the factory chimneys staring over all, The grey grows ever denser, and soon the night will fall: The wind runs sobbing over the beach and touches with its hands Straw, chaff, old bottles, broken crates, the litter of the sands. Sometimes the bloated carcase of a dog or fish is found, Sometimes the rumpled feathers of a sea-gull shot or drowned. Last year it was an unknown man who came up from the sea, There is his grave hard by the dunes under a stunted tree. With heavy doleful clamour, hour on hour, and day on day, The muddy groundswell lifts and breaks and falls and slides away. (2) SNOW AT SEA _Andante._ Silently fell The snow on the waters In the grey dusk Of the winter evening: Swirling and falling, Sucked into the oily Blue-black surface Of the sea. We pounded on slowly; From our bows sheeted A shuddering mass of heavy foam: Night closed about us, But ere we were darkened, We saw close in A great gaunt schooner Beating to southward. Silently fell The snow on the waters, As we pounded north In the winter evening. (3) THE NIGHT WIND _Adagio lamentoso._ Wind of the night, wind of the long cool shadows, Wind from the garden gate stealing up the avenue, Wind caressing my cool pale cheek completely, All my happiness goes out to you. Wind flapping aimlessly at my yellow window curtain, Wind suddenly insisting on your way down to the sea, Buoyant wind, sobbing wind, wind shuddering and plaintive, Why come you from beyond through the night's blue mystery? Wind of my dream, wind of the delicate beauty, Wind strumming idly at the harp-strings of my heart: Wind of the autumn--O melancholy beauty, Touch me once--one instant--you and I shall never part!