Poems (Tree)/In the Night I Hear My Loneliness Calling
IN the night I hear my loneliness calling
The long shrill note of the seabird's cry
Over the fuming spite of breakers,
Over the brumous, sulky tides.
All the ocean is craving Heavenward,
And the wild sky crushes downward toward the sea,
Where the clouds stoop their passionate bodies,
And the waves rear their supplicating hands.
Mine eyes grow tired of looking outward forever,
Away from the firelight and my sleeping idols,
To where the darkness is shattered with gusts of white,
Wings of ship, and bird, and cloud, and wave,
Flashing their signals of unrest.—
My longing is a warm thing in a cold street,
Taking refuge by the chinks of lighted doors—
My longing is a pale ghost stepping into the sunlight
That falls in golden curtains sumptuous and hushed
My longing is a fiddler making a thin tune through the silence,
Through the heavy pauses of sleep.—
Ah! Stop up my ears lest I hear my longing call,
Lest I hear my loneliness crying!
The long shrill note of the seabird's cry
Over the fuming spite of breakers,
Over the brumous, sulky tides.
All the ocean is craving Heavenward,
And the wild sky crushes downward toward the sea,
Where the clouds stoop their passionate bodies,
And the waves rear their supplicating hands.
Mine eyes grow tired of looking outward forever,
Away from the firelight and my sleeping idols,
To where the darkness is shattered with gusts of white,
Wings of ship, and bird, and cloud, and wave,
Flashing their signals of unrest.—
My longing is a warm thing in a cold street,
Taking refuge by the chinks of lighted doors—
My longing is a pale ghost stepping into the sunlight
That falls in golden curtains sumptuous and hushed
My longing is a fiddler making a thin tune through the silence,
Through the heavy pauses of sleep.—
Ah! Stop up my ears lest I hear my longing call,
Lest I hear my loneliness crying!
1918