191 On Lynn Terrace

ALL day to watch the blue wave curl and break,

All night to hear it plunging on the shore—

In this sea-dream such draughts of life I take,

I cannot ask for more.

Behind me lie the idle life and vain,

The task unfinished, and the weary hours;

That long wave softly bears me back to Spain

And the Alhambra’s towers!

Once more I halt in Andalusian Pass,

To list the mule-bells jingling on the height;

Below, against the dull esparto grass,

The almonds glimmer white.

Huge gateways, wrinkled, with rich grays and browns,

Invite my fancy, and I wander through

The gable-shadowed, zigzag streets of towns

The world’s first sailors knew.

Or, if I will, from out this thin sea-haze

Low-lying cliffs of lovely Calais rise;

Or yonder, with the pomp of olden days,

Venice salutes my eyes.

Or some gaunt castle lures me up its stair;

I see, far off, the red tiled hamlets shine,

And catch, through slits of windows here and there,

Blue glimpses of the Rhine.

Again I pass Norwegian fjord and fell,

And through bleak wastes to where the sunset’s fires

Light up the white-walled Russian citadel,

The Kremlin’s domes and spires.

And now I linger in green English lanes,

By garden-plots of rose and heliotrope;

And now I face the sudden pelting rains

On some lone Alpine slope.

Now at Tangier, among the packed bazaars,

I saunter, and the merchants at the doors

Smile, and entice me: here are jewels like stars,

And curved knives of the Moors;

Cloths of Damascus, strings of amber dates;

What would Howadji—silver, gold, or stone?

Prone on the sun-scorched plain outside the gates

The camels make their moan.

All this is mine, as I lie dreaming here,

High on the windy terrace, day by day;

And mine the children’s laughter, sweet and clear,

Ringing across the bay.

For me the clouds; the ships sail by for me;

For me the petulant sea-gull takes its flight;

And mine the tender moonrise on the sea,

And hollow caves of night.

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