V. The South Seas   
4. Heaven   
     
FISH (fly-replete, in depth of June,      
Dawdling away their wat’ry noon)      
Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear,      
Each secret fishy hope or fear.      
Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond;           5   
But is there anything Beyond?      
This life cannot be All, they swear,      
For how unpleasant, if it were!      
One may not doubt that, somehow, Good      
Shall come of Water and of Mud;          10   
And, sure, the reverent eye must see      
A Purpose in Liquidity.      
We darkly know, by Faith we cry,      
The future is not Wholly Dry.      
Mud unto mud!—Death eddies near—          15   
Not here the appointed End, not here!      
But somewhere, beyond Space and Time.      
Is wetter water, slimier slime!      
And there (they trust) there swimmeth One      
Who swam ere rivers were begun,          20   
Immense, of fishy form and mind,      
Squamous, omnipotent, and kind;      
And under that Almighty Fin,      
The littlest fish may enter in.      
Oh! never fly conceals a hook,          25   
Fish say, in the Eternal Brook,      
But more than mundane weeds are there,      
And mud, celestially fair;      
Fat caterpillars drift around,      
And Paradisal grubs are found;          30   
Unfading moths, immortal flies,      
And the worm that never dies.      
And in that Heaven of all their wish,      
There shall be no more land, say fish.

   
V. The South Seas   
5. Doubts   
     
WHEN she sleeps, her soul, I know,      
Goes a wanderer on the air,      
Wings where I may never go,      
Leaves her lying, still and fair,      
Waiting, empty, laid aside,           5   
Like a dress upon a chair.…      
This I know, and yet I know      
Doubts that will not be denied.      
     
For if the soul be not in place,      
What has laid trouble in her face?          10   
And, sits there nothing ware and wise      
Behind the curtains of her eyes,      
What is it, in the self’s eclipse,      
Shadows, soft and passingly,      
About the corners of her lips,          15   
The smile that is essential she?      
     
And if the spirit be not there,      
Why is fragrance in the hair?

   
V. The South Seas   
6. There’s Wisdom in Women   
     
“OH love is fair, and love is rare;” my dear one she said,      
“But love goes lightly over.” I bowed her foolish head,      
And kissed her hair and laughed at her. Such a child was she;      
So new to love, so true to love, and she spoke so bitterly.      
     
But there’s wisdom in women, of more than they have known,           5   
And thoughts go blowing through them, are wiser than their own,      
Or how should my dear one, being ignorant and young,      
Have cried on love so bitterly, with so true a tongue?

V. The South Seas   
7. He Wonders Whether to Praise or to Blame Her   
     
I HAVE peace to weigh your worth, now all is over,      
  But if to praise or blame you, cannot say.      
For, who decries the loved, decries the lover;      
  Yet what man lauds the thing he’s thrown away?      
     
Be you, in truth, this dull, slight, cloudy naught,           5   
  The more fool I, so great a fool to adore;      
But if you’re that high goddess once I thought,      
  The more your godhead is, I lose the more.      
     
Dear fool, pity the fool who thought you clever!      
  Dear wisdom, do not mock the fool that missed you!          10   
Most fair,—the blind has lost your face for ever!      
  Most foul,—how could I see you while I kissed you?      
     
So… the poor love of fools and blind I’ve proved you,      
For, foul or lovely, ’twas a fool that loved you.

V. The South Seas   
8. A Memory   
     
(From a sonnet-sequence)


SOMEWHILE before the dawn I rose, and stept      
  Softly along the dim way to your room,      
  And found you sleeping in the quiet gloom,      
And holiness about you as you slept.      
I knelt there; till your waking fingers crept           5   
  About my head, and held it. I had rest      
  Unhoped this side of Heaven, beneath your breast.      
I knelt a long time, still; nor even wept.      
     
It was great wrong you did me; and for gain      
Of that poor moment’s kindliness, and ease,          10   
And sleepy mother-comfort!      
    Child, you know      
How easily love leaps out to dreams like these,      
Who has seen them true. And love that’s wakened so      
Takes all too long to lay asleep again.

WAIKIKI, October 1913.

V. The South Seas   
9. One Day   
     
TODAY I have been happy. All the day      
  I held the memory of you, and wove      
Its laughter with the dancing light o’ the spray,      
  And sowed the sky with tiny clouds of love,      
And sent you following the white waves of sea,           5   
  And crowned your head with fancies, nothing worth,      
Stray buds from that old dust of misery,      
  Being glad with a new foolish quiet mirth.      
     
So lightly I played with those dark memories,      
Just as a child, beneath the summer skies,          10   
  Plays hour by hour with a strange shining stone,      
For which (he knows not) towns were fire of old,      
  And love has been betrayed, and murder done,      
And great kings turned to a little bitter mould.

THE PACIFIC, October 1913.

V. The South Seas   
10. Waikiki   
     
WARM perfumes like a breath from vine and tree      
  Drift down the darkness. Plangent, hidden from eyes,      
  Somewhere an eukaleli thrills and cries      
And stabs with pain the night’s brown savagery.      
And dark scents whisper; and dim waves creep to me,           5   
  Gleam like a woman’s hair, stretch out, and rise;      
  And new stars burn into the ancient skies,      
Over the murmurous soft Hawaian sea.      
     
And I recall, lose, grasp, forget again,      
  And still remember, a tale I have heard, or known,          10   
An empty tale, of idleness and pain,      
  Of two that loved—or did not love—and one      
Whose perplexed heart did evil, foolishly,      
A long while since, and by some other sea.

WAIKIKI, 1913.

V. The South Seas   
11. Hauntings   
     
IN the grey tumult of these after years      
  Oft silence falls; the incessant wranglers part;      
And less-than-echoes of remembered tears      
  Hush all the loud confusion of the heart;      
And a shade, through the toss’d ranks of mirth and crying           5   
  Hungers, and pains, and each dull passionate mood,—      
Quite lost, and all but all forgot, undying,      
  Comes back the ecstasy of your quietude.      
     
So a poor ghost, beside his misty streams,      
Is haunted by strange doubts, evasive dreams,          10   
  Hints of a pre-Lethean life, of men,      
Stars, rocks, and flesh, things unintelligible,      
  And light on waving grass, he knows not when,      
And feet that ran, but where, he cannot tell.

THE PACIFIC, 1914.

V. The South Seas   
12. Sonnet   
     
(Suggested by some of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research)


NOT with vain tears, when we’re beyond the sun,      
  We’ll beat on the substantial doors, nor tread      
  Those dusty high-roads of the aimless dead      
Plaintive for Earth; but rather turn and run      
Down some close-covered by-way of the air,           5   
  Some low sweet alley between wind and wind,      
  Stoop under faint gleams, thread the shadows, find      
Some whispering ghost-forgotten nook, and there      
     
Spend in pure converse our eternal day;      
  Think each in each, immediately wise;          10   
Learn all we lacked before; hear, know, and say      
  What this tumultuous body now denies;      
And feel, who have laid our groping hands away;      
  And see, no longer blinded by our eyes.

V. The South Seas   
13. Clouds   
     
DOWN the blue night the unending columns press      
  In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow,      
  Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snow      
Up to the white moon’s hidden loveliness.      
Some pause in their grave wandering comradeless,           5   
  And turn with profound gesture vague and slow,      
  As who would pray good for the world, but know      
Their benediction empty as they bless.      
     
They say that the Dead die not, but remain      
  Near to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth.          10   
  I think they ride the calm mid-heaven, as these,      
In wise majestic melancholy train,      
  And watch the moon, and the still-raging seas,      
  And men, coming and going on the earth.

THE PACIFIC, October 1913.