Page:A New Zealand verse (1906).pdf/121

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The Ship and the Sea.
85
Hover, as round their mother, at her helm.The sea is gemm’d with her, the sun’s wide eyeBrightens all day on her, and when night comes,The stars mount up her rigging, the moon slipsWhite feet upon her sharply-shadow’d decks,And, in her towers of steady sail high-sitting,Quietly sings the wind.
 More: she herself, this world amid convoysAnother world, and other. Sound of lipsAnd light of eyes, a burden of warm breathAnd hearts toward other hearts that beat, is comeUpon the emptiness—a world of quick,Doing, devising Consciousness usurpsThis kingdom of untroubled oneness—playsIts sole pulsating part in this huge OOf unspectator’d theatre . . . and thenAs in its entry, in its exit, brief—Vanishes. The ship passes and is gone.
 A rushing star, thro’ Heaven’s capacious calmDown-hurling momentary fire: a swiftPassion, that strong on some commanding spiritLeaps—fastens—fails: or, an importunate flyThat, loud about its little business,One drowsy second of the summer noonAwakes, the next falls dead: invading so,So takes possession, so predominates,And even so is pass’d the ship, and gone.
 She passes. And the indifferent world resumesIts ancient semblance, and its own device.Voiceless once more, unpeopled and alone,One vast monotony magnificent,The air, the sea, and the infinite sky
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