The low downs lean to the sea; the stream, One loose thin pulseless tremulous vein, Rapid and vivid and dumb as a dream, Works downward, sick of the sun and the rain; No wind is rough with the rank rare flowers; The sweet sea, mother of loves and hours, Shudders and shines as the grey winds gleam, Turning her smile to a fugitive pain. Mother of loves that are swift to fade, Mother of mutable winds and hours. A barren mother, a mother-maid, Cold and clean as her faint salt flowers. I would we twain were even as she, Lost in the night and the light of the sea, Where faint sounds falter and wan beams wade, Break, and are broken, and shed into showers. The loves and hours of the life of a man, They are swift and sad, being born of the sea. Hours that rejoice and regret for a span, Born with a man's breath, mortal as he; Loves that are lost ere they come to birth, Weeds of the wave, without fruit upon earth. I lose what I long for, save what I can, My love, my love, and no love for me! It is not much that a man can save On the sands of life, in the straits of time, Who swims in sight of the great third wave That never a swimmer shall cross or climb. Some waif washed up with the strays and spars That ebb-tide shows to the shore and the stars; Weed from the water, grass from a grave, A broken blossom, a ruined rhyme. There will no man do for your sake, I think, What I would have done for the least word said. I had wrung life dry for your lips to drink, Broken it up for your daily bread: Body for body and blood for blood, As the flow of the full sea risen to flood That yearns and trembles before it sink, I had given, and lain down for you, glad and dead. Yea, hope at highest and all her fruit, And time at fullest and all his dower, I had given you surely, and life to boot, Were we once made one for a single hour. But now, you are twain, you are cloven apart, Flesh of his flesh, but heart of my heart; And deep in one is the bitter root, And sweet for one is the lifelong flower. To have died if you cared I should die for you, clung To my life if you bade me, played my part As it pleased you--these were the thoughts that stung, The dreams that smote with a keener dart Than shafts of love or arrows of death; These were but as fire is, dust, or breath, Or poisonous foam on the tender tongue Of the little snakes that eat my heart. I wish we were dead together to-day, Lost sight of, hidden away out of sight, Clasped and clothed in the cloven clay, Out of the world's way, out of the light, Out of the ages of worldly weather, Forgotten of all men altogether, As the world's first dead, taken wholly away, Made one with death, filled full of the night.