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Title: By The South Sea
Author: Rennell Rodd [
More Titles by Rodd]
So here we have sat by the sea so late,
And you with your dreaming eyes
Have argued well what I know you hate,
Till even my own dream dies.
Yet why will you smile at my old white years
When love was a gift divine,
When songs were laughter and hope and tears,
And art was a people's shrine?
Must I change the burdens I loved to sing,
The words of my worn-out song?
The old fair thoughts have a hollow ring,
My faiths have been dead so long.
And yet,--to have known that one did not know!
To have dreamed with the poet priest!
To have hope to feel that it might be so!
And theirs was a faith at least.
When the priest was poet, and hearts were fain
Of marvellous things to dream,
To see God's tears in a cloud of rain,
And his hair on a gold sunbeam;
To know that the sons of the old Sea King
Roamed under their waves at will,
To have heard a song that the wood gods sing
On the other side of the hill!
And so I had held it,--for all things blend
In the world's great harmony,--
That they served an end to an after-end,
And were of the things that be.
But now ye are bidding your God god-speed
With his lore upon dusty shelves;
So wise ye are grown, ye have found no need
For any god but yourselves.
Ye have learnt the riddle of seas and sand,
Of leaves in the spring uncurled;
There is no room left for my wonderland
In the whole of the great wide world.
And what have ye left for a song to say?
What now is a singer's fame?
He may startle the ear with a word one day,
And die,--and live in a name.
But the world has heed unto no fair thing,
Men pass on their soulless ways,
They give no faith unto those who sing,
--Give hardly a heartless praise.
But you say, Let us go unto all wide lands,
Let us speak to the people's heart!
Let us make good use of our lips and hands,
There is hope for the world in art!
Will the dull ears hear, will the dead souls see?
Will they know what we hardly know?
The chords of the wonderful harmony
Of the earth and the skies?--if so--
We have talked too long till it all seems vain,
The desire and the hopes that fired,
The triumphs won and the needless pain,
And the heart that has hoped is tired.
Do you see down there where the high cliffs shrink,
And the ripples break on the bay,
Our old sea boat at the white foam brink
With the sail slackened down half-way?
Shall we get hence? O fair heart's brother!
You are weary at heart with me,
We two alone in the world, no other:
Shall we go to our wide kind sea?
Shall we glide away in this white moon's track?
Does it not seem fair in your eyes!
--To drift and drift with our white sail black
In the dreamful light of the skies,
Till the pale stars die, and some far fair shore
Comes up through the morning haze,
And wandering hearts shall not wander more
Far off from the mad world's ways.
Or still more fair--when the dim scared night
Grows pale from the east to the west--
If the waters gather us home, and the light
Break through on the waves' unrest,
And there in the gleam of the gold-washed sea,
Which the smile of the morning brings,
Our souls shall fathom the mystery,
And the riddle of all these things.
1879.
[The end]
Rennell Rodd's poem: By The South Sea
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