Glaucus

HEARKEN the voices of the ancient deep,
How, evermore and evermore, arise
From its unsolaced bosom moans and sighs,
That with the heart of man communion keep !
Oft dwellers by the strand awake from sleep,
Perplexed by importuning wave-borne cries ;
And oft to thoughts unvoiced receive replies,
At which they weep, yet know not why they weep.

To Glaucus they have listened unaware :
He now is mighty in the mighty seas, —
Breather of rushing gale or gentle breeze,
Propitious to the toiling sailor’s prayer ;
And yet he once, with studious, trembling care,
Gave gifts the jealous Ocean to appease,
And from the murmuring, sea-loved, sacred trees
Wrought mast and beam, upon the deep to fare.

That hour when he from mortal frailty passed,
And all its wonder, he remembers yet:
The wine-dark water when the sun was set,
The netted fish upon the herbage cast,
The tasted plant; the leap, the billows vast,
Above his head in vaulted ceiling met;
The trident and the foam-flower coronet,
Wherewith the God of Waves endowed him last.

He now is subtle in all subtle lore,
The heritage of gray Poseidon’s race;
But still, half human-hearted, would retrace
His fated way, and still he haunts the shore.
Hence lives his voice through winds’ and waves’ uproar,
And often, for a fleeting moment’s space,
Far up the beach he lays a fondling face,
And murmurs in a tongue beloved from yore.

Or now he bids the streams that hither flow
Take flowery tribute from the meadows wide,
And branch and shaft from leaning forest-side ;
He gathers all, and rocks them to and fro !
But what shall he upon the shore bestow ?
Pale-tressèd seaweeds, parted from the tide,
And shells within whose rosy crypts abide
Faint echoes of the strains the tritons blow.

Oh, yet, perchance, along the border green
That waves above the fruitless silver sands,
Its crafty leaves the magic plant expands:
But taste not, finding it, thou searcher keen !
Since grows no herb within the Sea’s demesne
That could restore thee to these pleasant lands ;
Else had lamenting Glaucus broke his bands,
And slept amid the grassy hills serene.