When I consider Life and its few years -- A wisp of fog betwixt us and the sun; A call to battle, and the battle done Ere the last echo dies within our ears; A rose choked in the grass; an hour of fears; The gusts that past a darkening shore do beat; The burst of music down an unlistening street, -- I wonder at the idleness of tears. Ye old, old dead, and ye of yesternight, Chieftains, and bards, and keepers of the sheep, By every cup of sorrow that you had, Loose me from tears, and make me see aright How each hath back what once he stayed to weep: Homer his sight, David his little lad! The Sea-Lands. [Orrick Johns] Would I were on the sea-lands, Where winds know how to sting; And in the rocks at midnight The lost long murmurs sing. Would I were with my first love To hear the rush and roar Of spume below the doorstep And winds upon the door. My first love was a fair girl With ways forever new; And hair a sunlight yellow, And eyes a morning blue. The roses, have they tarried Or are they dun and frayed? If we had stayed together, Would love, indeed, have stayed? Ah, years are filled with learning, And days are leaves of change! And I have met so many I knew . . . and found them strange. But on the sea-lands tumbled By winds that sting and blind, The nights we watched, so silent, Come back, come back to mind. I mind about my first love, And hear the rush and roar Of spume below the doorstep And winds upon the door. Bag-Pipes at Sea. [Clinton Scollard] Above the shouting of the gale, The whipping sheet, the dashing spray, I heard, with notes of joy and wail, A piper play. Along the dipping deck he trod, The dusk about his shadowy form; He seemed like some strange ancient god Of song and storm. He gave his dim-seen pipes a skirl And war went down the darkling air; Then came a sudden subtle swirl, And love was there. What were the winds that flailed and flayed The sea to him, the night obscure? In dreams he strayed some brackened glade, Some heathery moor. And if he saw the slanting spars, And if he watched the shifting track, He marked, too, the eternal stars Shine through the wrack. And so amid the deep sea din, And so amid the wastes of foam, Afar his heart was happy in His highland home! The Heart's Country. [Florence Wilkinson] Hill people turn to their hills; Sea-folk are sick for the sea: Thou art my land and my country, And my heart calls out for thee. The bird beats his wings for the open, The captive burns to be free; But I -- I cry at thy window, For thou art my liberty. Joyous-Gard. [Thomas S. Jones, Jr.]