Never a word was said Of what must be so soon; In longing and in dread The golden afternoon Burned down, till dusk was shed. It was not hope, nor fear, Yet something of them both, That held us trembling here, Half eager and half loath For darkness, dread but dear. Few were the words were spoken, But in each other’s eyes We read the certain token That sealed our destinies-- Our wings of pride were broken. So, while the waters paled Around us, and the west Fainted, our hearts that failed, In silence were confessed. Silence at last prevailed. And now up her clear stair The evening-star began To climb, where heaven was bare A homing fish-hawk ran Down avenues of air. Night swallowed up the sun, And darkness, like a hood, Sank--and the sea breathed on; In silence and solitude The eternal will was done. PILGRIM The cold wind cries across the rolling dunes, The gray sails fleck the margins of the world: I watch the rolling dunes along the barren sky, And wan, white waters by the swift wind hurled. O where are Queen Faustina, and Babylon, and Tyre, And pale Troy, lost in a silver mist of tears-- And I, O earth, your child, more old than all these others, What have you done to me these many thousand years! BY THE GRAY SEA Where the gray sea lay sad and vast You turned your head away, And we sat silently at last-- There was no word to say: _By the thunder, By the iron thunder of the sea._ We could not speak, for the lost hope Of the glad days before; We sat beside the long sea-slope, Watching the endless shore-- _By the thunder, By the iron thunder of the sea._ So that, as in the old despair, I reached you pleading hands; But you sat pale and helpless there, Beside the barren sands: _By the thunder, By the iron thunder of the sea!_ THE FISH-HAWK On the large highway of the awful air that flows Unbounded between sea and heaven, while twilight screened The sorrowful distances, he moved and had repose; On the huge wind of the Immensity he leaned His steady body in long lapse of flight--and rose Gradual, through broad gyres of ever-climbing rest, Up the clear stair of the eternal sky, and stood Throned on the summit! Slowly, with his widening breast, Widened around him the enormous Solitude, From the gray rim of ocean to the glowing west. Headlands and capes forlorn of the far coast, the land Rolling her barrens toward the south, he, from his throne Upon the gigantic wind, beheld: he hung--he fanned The abyss for mighty joy, to feel beneath him strown Pale pastures of the sea, with heaven on either hand--