Sea Poems E-Book

Cale Young Rice

• Herausgeber: Classic Poetry
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

“The poems of this volume, gathered here after many requests, are, with a few exceptions, from my previous lyrical publications. They are also in a real sense an intimate record. For the sea has often enough seemed to me almost as a vast external sub consciousness in which the forces of my being—as well as the world's—were at play.”Cale Young Rice (December 7, 1872 – January 24, 1943) Young Rice was born in Dixon, Kentucky, to Laban Marchbanks Rice, a Confederate veteran and tobacco merchant, and his wife Martha Lacy. He was a younger brother of Laban Lacy Rice, a noted educator. Cale Rice grew up in Evansville, Indiana, and Louisville, Kentucky. He was educated at Cumberland University and at Harvard (A.B., 1895; A.M., 1896).He was married to the popular author Alice Hegan Rice; they worked together on several books. The marriage was childless, and Cale committed suicide by gunshot during the night of January 23–24 at his home in Louisville a year after her death due to his sorrow at losing her.Cale Rice's poems were collected and published in a single volume by his brother, Laban Lacy Rice.His birthplace in Dixon is designated by Kentucky State Historical Marker 1508, which reads:"Birthplace of Rice brothers, Cale Young, 1872-1943, noted poet and author; Laban Lacy, 1870-1973, well-known educator and author. Lacy published The Best Poetic Works of Cale Young Rice after Cale's death. Included in famous collection is poem, "The Mystic." Cale married Alice Hegan, also a distinguished Kentucky writer. Home overlooks Memorial Garden."

Leseprobe

SEA POEMS

………………

Cale Young Rice

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This book is a work of poetry; its contents are wholly imagined.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

SEA-HOARDINGS

THE SHORE’S SONG TO THE SEA

TO A FIREFLY BY THE SEA

INVOCATION

I KNOW YOUR HEART, O SEA!

A SEA-GHOST

FINITUDE

I.

II.

THE COLONEL’S STORY

COSMISM

OFF THE IRISH COAST

THE FAIRIES OF GOD

THE SONG OF THE HOMESICK GAEL

PAGEANTS OF THE SEA

A SONG OF THE OLD VENETIANS

BASKING

SAPPHO’S DEATH SONG

THE WIND’S WORD

SUBMARINE MOUNTAINS

THE SONG OF THE STORM-SPIRITS

THE GREAT SEDUCER

K’U-KIANG

TYPHOON

PENANG

NIGHTS ON THE INDIAN OCEAN

SIGHTING ARABIA

“ALL’S WELL”

I.

II.

III.

IV.

SOMNAMBULISM

I.

II.

CHARTINGS

THE TRAIL FROM THE SEA

HAUNTED SEAS

SEA LURE

SONGS TO A. H. R.

I. MINGLINGS

II. LOVE AND INFINITY

III. RECOMPENSE

IV. AT THE EBB-HOUR

V. IN A DARK HOUR

VI. VIA AMOROSA

VII. TRANSFUSION

NEED OF STORM

A FLORIDA INTERLUDE

I.

II.

A FLORIDA BOATING SONG

DAWN-BLISS

ATAVISM

RE-RECKONING

TO THE AFTERNOON MOON, AT SEA

PATHS

FROM A NORTHERN BEACH

PASSAGE

ALEEN

TO A SOLITARY SEA-GULL

INEFFABLE THINGS

THE SONG OF A SEA-FARER

WAVES

IN A STORM

AFTER THEIR PARTING

A WORD’S MAGIC

SEA RHAPSODY

IN AN ORIENTAL HARBOUR

UNDER THE SKY

A SONG FOR HEALING

A SINGHALESE LOVE LAMENT

THE CITY

FULL TIDE

THE HERDING

ON THE MAINE COAST

SEANCE

A SIDMOUTH LAD

WIDOWED

TO THE SEA

SEA-MAD

THE ATHEIST

AT THE HELM

IMPERTURBABLE

WASTE

RESURGENCE

LIFE’S ANSWER

AS THE TIDE COMES IN

SENSE-SWEETNESS

TIDALS

A SAILOR’S WIFE

TO SEA!

GIVE OVER, O SEA!

THE NUN

LAST SIGHT OF LAND

SEA-HOARDINGS

………………

My heart is open again and sea flows in,

It shall fill with a summer of mists and winds and clouds and waves breaking,

Of gull-wings over the green tide, of the surf’s drenching din,

Of sudden horizon-sails that come and vanish, phantom-thin,

Of arching sapphire skies, deep and unaching.

I shall lie on the rocks just over the weeds that drape

The clear sea-pools, where birth and death in sunny ooze are teeming.

Where the crab in quest of booty sidles about, a sullen shape,

Where the snail creeps and the mussel sleeps with wary valves agape,

Where life is too grotesque to be but seeming.

And the swallow shall weave my dreams with threads of flight,

A shuttle with silver breast across the warp of the waves gliding;

And an isle far out shall be a beam in the loom of my delight,

And the pattern of every dream shall be a rapture bathed in light—

Its evanescence a beauty most abiding.

And the sunsets shall give sadness all its due,

They shall stain the sands and trouble the tides with all the ache of sorrow.

They shall bleed and die with a beauty of meaning old yet ever new,

They shall burn with all the hunger for things that hearts have failed to do,

They shall whisper of a gold that none can borrow.

And the stars shall come and build a bridge of fire

For the moon to cross the boundless sea, with never a fear of sinking.

They shall teach me of the magic things of life never to tire,

And how to renew, when it is low, the lamp of my desire—

And how to hope, in the darkest deeps of thinking.

THE SHORE’S SONG TO THE SEA

………………

Out on the rocks primeval,

The grey Maine rocks that slant and break to the sea,

With the bay and juniper round them,

And the leagues on leagues before them,

And the terns and gulls wheeling and crying, wheeling and crying over,

I sat heart-still and listened.

And first I could only hear the wind in my ears,

And the foam trying to fill the high rock-shallows.

And then, over the wind, over the whitely blossoming foam,

Low, low, like a lover’s song beginning,

I heard the nuptial pleading of the old shore,

A pleading ever occultly growing louder:—

_O sea, glad bride of me!

Born of the bright ether and given to wed me,

Given to glance, ever, for me, and gleam and dance in the sun—

Come to my arms, come to my reaching arms,

That seem so still and unavailing to take you, and hold you,

Yet never forget,

Never by day or night,

The hymeneal delights of your embracings._

_Come, for the moon, my rival, shall not have you;

No, for tho twice daily afar he beckons and you go,

You, my bride, a little way back to meet him,

As if he once had been your lover, he too, and again enspelled you,

Soon, soon, I know it is only feigning!

For turning, playfully turning, tidally turning,

You rush foamingly, swiftly back to my arms!_

_And so would I have you rush; so rush now!

Come from the sands where you have stayed too long,

Come from the reefs where you have wandered silent,

For ebbings are good, the restful ebbings of love,

But, oh, the bridal flowings of it are better!

And now I would have you loose again my tresses,

My locks rough and weedy, rough and brown and brinily tangled,

But, oh, again as a bridegroom’s, when your tide, whispering in,

Lifts them up, pulsingly up with kisses!_

_Come with your veil thrown back, breaking to spray!

And oh, with plangent passion!

Come with your naked sweetness, salt and wholesome, to my bosom;

Let not a cave or crevice of me miss you, or cranny,

For, oh, the nuptial joy you float into me,

The cooling ambient clasp of you, I have waited over-long,

And I need to know again its marriage meaning!_

_For I think it is not alone to bring forth life, that I mate you;

More than life is the beauty of life with love!

Plentiful are the children that you bear to me, the blossoms,

The fruits and all the creatures at your breast dewily fed,

But mating is troubled with a far higher meaning—

A hint of a consummation for all things.

Come utterly then,

Utterly to me come,

And let us surge together, clasped close, in infinite union,

Until we reach a transcendence of all birth, and all dying,

An ecstasy holding the universe blended—

Such ecstasy as is its ultimate Aim!_

So sang the shore, the long bay-scented shore,

Broken by many an isle, many an inlet bird-embosomed,

And the sea gave answer, bridally, tidally turning,

And leapt, radiant, into his rocky arms!

TO A FIREFLY BY THE SEA

………………

Little torch-bearer, alone with me in the night,

You cannot light the sea, nor I illumine life.

They are too vast for us, they are too deep for us.

We glow with all our strength, but back the shadows sweep:

And after a while will come—unshadowed Sleep.

Here on the rocks that take the turning tide;

Here by the wide lone waves and lonelier wastes of sky,

We keep our poet-watch, as patient poets should,

Questioning earth’s commingled ill and good to us.

Yet little of them, or naught, have truly understood.

Bright are the stars, and constellated thick.

To you, so quick to flit along your flickering course,

They seem perhaps as glowing mates in other fields.

And all the knowledge I have gathered yields to me

Scarce more of the great mystery their wonder wields.

For the moon we are waiting—and behold

Her ardent gold drifts up, her sail has caught the breeze

That blows all being thro the Universe always.

So now, little light-keeper, you no more need nurse

Your gleam, for lo! she mounts, and sullen clouds disperse.

And I with aching thought may cease to burn,

And humbly turn to rest—knowing no glow of mine

Can ever be so beauteous as have been to me

Your soft beams here beside the sea’s elusive din:

For grief too oft has kindled me, and pain, and the world’s sin.

INVOCATION

………………

(_From a High Cliff_)

………………

Sweep unrest

Out of my blood,

Winds of the sea! Sweep the fog

Out of my brain

For I am one

Who has told Life he will be free.

Who will not doubt of work that’s done,

Who will not fear the work to do,

Who will hold peaks Promethean

Better than all Jove’s honey-dew.

Who when the Vulture tears his breast

Will smile into the Terror’s Eyes.

Who for the World has this Bequest—

Hope, that eternally is wise.

I KNOW YOUR HEART, O SEA!

………………

I know your heart, O Sea!

You are tossed with cold desire to flood earth utterly;

You run at the cliffs, you fling wild billows at beaches,

You reach at islands with fingers of foam to crumble them;

Yes, even at mountain tops you shout your purpose

Of making the earth a shoreless circle of waters!

I know your surging heart!

Tides mighty and all-contemptuous rise within it,

Tides spurred by the wind to champ and charge and thunder—

Tho the sun and moon rein them—

At the troubling land, the breeding-place of mortals,

Of men who are ever transmuting life to spirit,

And ever taking your salt to savor their tears.

I know your tides, I know them!

“Down,” they rage, “with the questing of men, and crying!

With their continents—cradles of grief and despair!

Better entombing waters for them, better our deeps unfathomed,

Where birth is soulless, life goalless, death toll-less for all,

And where dark ooze enshrouds past resurrection!”

Ah, yes, I know your heart!

I have heard it raving at coast-lights set to reveal you,

I have watched it foam at ships that sought to defy you,

I have seen it straining at cables that cross you, bearing whispers hid to you,

Or heaving at waves of the air that tell your hurricanes.

I know, I know your heart!

Men you will sink, and shores will sink; but a shore shall be man’s forever,

From whence his lighthouse soul shall signal the Infinite,

Whose fleets go by, star after star, bearing their unknown burden

To a Port which only eternity shall determine!