THE SONG
Hush, ah hush! the sea is kind!
Lullaby is in the wind;
Grief the babe forgets to weep,
Lapped and spelled and laid to sleep:
His lip is wet with the milk of the spray;
He shall not wake till another day.
Ah hush! the sea is kind!
Who can tell, ah who can tell,
The cradling nurse’s croonèd spell?
While the slumber-web she weaves
Never nursling stirs or grieves:
The tears that drowned his sweet eye-beams
Are turned to mists of rainbow dreams.
Ah hush! she charms us well!
“All thy hurts I balm and bind;
All thy heart’s loves thou shalt find!”
Yea, this she murmurs, best of all:
“It was not loss that did befall!
All thy joys are put away;
They shall be thine another day!”
Ah hush! the sea is kind!
She sang; she trembled like a lyre;
Her pure eyes burned with azure fire;
About her lucent brow the hair
Played like light flames divine ones wear:
The maid was very fair.
But when she saw he gave no heed,—
Close-mantled up in ancient pain
As in some sad-wound weed,
Dumb as a shape of stone,
Being years past all moan,—
She tried no other strain,
But softly spake: “Most royal sir!”
He raised his head and looked at her.
So might a castaway, half dead,
Lift up his haggard head,
Waked by the swirl of sudden rain,
A cool, unhoped-for grace,
Against his tearless face:
And see, with happy-crazèd mind,
Upon his raft a Bright One stand,—
His love of youth, her grave long left behind
In some sweet-watered land.