Complete Works of William Hope Hodgson
Page 192
Hush-o-sigh! Yet my little rills were leaping
E’er I came near the sea.
Hush-o-sigh for the lands where spirits, weeping,
Have walked and wept with me.
Hush-o-sigh to the lonely sky!
I dream of sun-loomed dells.
O dream with me!
O weep with me!
For afar the faery bells
Come moaning down the wind, as I
Leap o’er the cliff with a wailing cry,
And pass to the unknown sea.
As I wander to the sea, a little sighing
Thrills all along my foam.
As I wander, lo! the years are quietly flying;
And am I nearing home?
Do I sob? Nay! Yes!
Perhaps I sob unknowing;
Yet not so very sad —
(Just as the wind cries low, a little blowing,)
And still, not so very glad.
Hush-o-sigh! with a wail; for I hear the storm-waves knelling
Beyond the calling shore.
Hush-o-sigh! for the woods and the flowers, sweet-smelling,
I lose forevermore!
The Sobbing of the Fresh Water
Hush-o-sigh to the lonely sky!
I dream of sun-loomed dells.
O dream with me! O weep with me!
For afar the faery bells
Come moaning down the wind, as I
Leap o’er the cliff with a wailing cry,
And pass to the Unknown Sea.
O PARENT SEA!
When I have died,
I’ll look not to the earth to hold me,
I’ll look not to the sky to take me;
But rather are my thoughts directed to the wide
Of that deep, wonderful and living sea.
O Sea! O Sea!
When I, thy child, have passed beyond the veil
And looked upon God’s awful mystery,
And He, with some cold gesture of His hand,
Has beckoned me from Heaven’s silent gates
Into the wildness of an unknown land;
Then wilt thou, Parent Sea, encompass me,
And let thine arms, encompassing, avail
My shuddering soul until God’s wrath abates.
LISTENING
Do you not know the hills,
Brothers, and the song of silence there,
Where little winds go wandering — lost
In the aethereal air,
And the high peaks stand alone into the shadeless dawn,
And the vales filled with translucent air, uncrost
Are motionless, dead, at a noise in the far quiet morn,
For there is always among the hills the sound,
of something coming that never comes.
Oh, stand alone in the hills,
Ye Lonely, with the song of silence singing,
And the dance of Dusk afar in the shadeless air
And the Wind-bells hushed from their ringing
And only the moanless stir
Of something a-move in the hills, where no birds are winging —
Of something a-move in the quiet of that noiseless singing;
For there is always among the hills the sound,
of something coming that never comes.
In the still of the night, when you stand with the silences sleeping,
And the peaks are waiting the dawn
And the visionless air is a bosom where Sorrow is weeping
And the soul goes quiet, and the heart is utter forlorn
You shall hark to a sound, where the spires unto heaven are stealing,
A sound far and strange ere the morn,
For there is always among the hills the sound,
of something coming that never comes.
Up from my hill-home he went, and since that day
He has not come to kiss my lips again,
And the long nights pass slow — so slow away
At my wide opened casement, listening in my pain,
For there is always among the hills the sound,
of someone coming who never comes.
MY BABE MY BABE
And my babe lay dying
And my babe lay dead
And my bones are crying, crying
By an empty bed.
I meet my babe on that first stair
Where early months he climbed and fell,
And pass swift by that memory’s lair
Sundered with thoughts I dare not tell.
I meet my babe without my door
And pass him by in silence there,
My little babe who is no more
I meet him lonely without care.
I meet my babe in that quiet room
Where one wee cot calls through the night
An empty voice through all the gloom
Once so strangely light.
My husband’s arms are opened wide,
But oh! my babe is crouched so near —
The babe that in my two arms died;
My heart is dry and sere.
And when I lift the skirt I wore
A silent shadow flits away —
My babe there nestled, as of yore –
My babe that died on that grey day.
THE NIGHT WIND
O, thou sad wind, drear and inscrutable,
I hear thy speech among dark mountain crests —
(Above their faces, calm and immutable,)
Sinking at whiles to rests
Like the slumbering creep of foam on quiet sands,
Or sleeping of mists and rain o’er silent lands,
Rising anon to speech which seems to sound
Out of the throat of some undreamt-of Pain –
Rising and rising, till the whole world round
Gives back an echo of thy mournful strain,
Till the mysterious deeps that lurk in space
Receive the sound in their engulphant maws;
And further off, where through tremendous doors
God peers, strangely it passes o’er His face,
Meaning of worlds in pain.
GREY SEAS ARE DREAMING OF MY DEATH
I know grey seas are dreaming of my death,
Out on grey plains where foam is lost in sleep,
Where one damp wind wails on continually,
And no life lives in the forgotten air.
And change the mood, and Ha! the fierce winds howl,
And the unforgotten hissing of the foam
Pours out of heaven’s bowl;
And Oh! my home
Lifts up its voice in one tremendous chaunt –
Greeting! Oh, Greeting!
Ye souls of dust in weary lands
Shall never know that greeting.
Death’s purple shadow tinges all the grey;
And we of those grey waters know it well;
We know that he is come, and not in vain;
One must go hence, passing in his pain.
Ayihie! Yoi! but Oh! The mood doth change,
The sea doth lift me high on living mountains;
As a mother guards her babe
So the fierce hills round me range,
And a Voice goes on and on in mighty laughter –
The joyous call of Strength, which doth enguard me.
Ayihie! Yoi! all the splendour of the sea
Doth guard me from the slaughter.
Oh! men in weary lads
Lift up your hearts and hands,
And weep ye are not me,
Child of all the sea,
Out upon the foam among the fountains
And the glory
And the magic of this water world
Where in childhood I was hurled.
Weep, for I am dying in my glory;
And the foam swings round and sings,
And the great seas chaunt; and the whitened hills are falling;
And I am dying in my glory, dying —
Dying, d
ying, dying.
THE CALLING OF THE SEA
CONTENTS
BEYOND THE DAWNING
THE CALLING OF THE SEA
DOWN THE LONG COASTS
EIGHT BELLS
GREY SEAS ARE DREAMING OF MY DEATH
STORM
SONG OF THE SHIP
THE PLACE OF STORMS
THE SHIP
THOU LIVING SEA
THE PIRATES
THE SONG OF THE GREAT BULL WHALE
THE SOBBING OF THE FRESHWATER
THE MORNING LANDS
LOST
REST
BEYOND THE DAWNING
In the stillness of the morning,
Early morning, when the silence
Of the sleeping world impresses
With a sense of things unsaid,
And the calling of the angels
Is just beyond our hearing,
And the gates of heaven open
Just beyond the shores of death;
Seems my soul to leave this earthly,
Morbid binding that enfolds it,
Rising up on wings of thought
In quiet contemplation wrapped,
Until all our earthly troubles
Seem so earthy, that I wonder,
With a wonder ever growing,
How their summits looked so high,
Rising into mimic mountains
Only mole-hills, from the sky.
Only mole-hills, and my wonder
Never seems to be decreasing,
Even when to earth I tumble
And I see them from below,
For I’ve seen them in the dawning,
From the heights of the supernal,
With the eyes of comprehension,
And I know they’re only high
To the eyes that pass unseeing
All the beauties of God’s giving,
To the eyes that ne’er interpret
God’s great mystery of dawn,
To the eyes that ever staring,
Never see the unimportance
Of the sordid, petty worries
That make life on earth a hell,
If they’ve never read the story
Writ across the sky at morning,
Of another morning coming
That shall never end in night,
Of a morning lit with glory
By a Sun of happy splendour
That shall shine its light on faces
Long departed through the years.
And from out that flame celestial
Shall come voices long remembered,
Which often I have seemed to hear
Like dream-calls from the place
That is visible at morning
To the eyes of understanding,
To the eyes through which the soul looks out
In an ever hopeful faith.
God, I thank Thee for the morning,
’Tis Thine own great way of telling
That there looms the steady glowing
Of a Sun that shall at last
Shine on our souls forever,
With a wondrous light so peaceful
That our tears shall be forgotten
In its everlasting joy.
Shall we not endure the evils
That encompass, for we know well,
If we watch the sky at morning,
That another Sun shall rise,
With a rising, never sinking,
When the last, eternal dawning
Flies through the mists of sorrow
On the day of God’s own Peace.
THE CALLING OF THE SEA
Hark! the voice of the Ocean is calling,
With an insistence
Sad and appalling,
Scorning resistance,
Out from the steepness
Of the great deepness
Lying in fathoms below that cold dress;
Where, in their starkness,
Smothered in darkness,
Like the dead, seeming
Silently dreaming,
Clasped in the strength of the Ocean’s caress.
What are the words said?
Have any caught them?
Are they the whisperings of the long-dead?
List, while the tides stem,
Liquid and sable,
Over the cable,
Sobbing and moaning some solemn decree.
Listen at midnight,
Over the lee-rail,
Under the moonlight,
Unto the sad wail;
Listen - be still!
Chance thus some mariner gather at will
Some tiny gleaning
Of the deep meaning,
Spoken forever,
Understood never,
In the low voice that calls out on his lee,
In the sad voice that cries out in the wake,
In that wild calling so cold and so dree.
Still, as the years go,
Lonely ships sailing
(Under the lee-strake)
Hear that slow wailing
Rise from below;
Yet none is able,
On the wide Ocean,
O’er the great surface of the deep sea,
Tossed by the motion
Of its wild waters,
Now, or forever, to tell unto me
What it is saying,
Jeering or praying,
Or whispering warnings
Unto its daughters
Of sombre dawnings
Ushering mornings
Pregnant with terrors the dead only see.
DOWN THE LONG COASTS
Down the long coasts
Where we wander in the dusk
Over the wild lone lea,
Down past the sentinels of musk
Where many a loaded scent goes free,
Where the quiet mystery
Of night sits brooding
While unknowable Hosts
Steal by without a sound
O’er the enchanted ground,
And we, intruding,
Stand silent there aghast,
Meeting the Infinite at last
As we steal on, more breathless with each step we go,
Pausing and listening,
Dumbly or whispering,
So we steal on and on,
Into the Mystery;
Lost on the long dim coasts,
Peering afar to sea
Where some lone glistening
Marks the hushed rise and fall,
Heave, and strange upward mound
Of some grey wave.
And, lo! We hear
Storm bells far vespering,
And some grim monstrous sound
Rolling across the Deep
Out of some Thunder Hall,
Builded from dome to nave
By hands of dusk.
Moaning afar and near
Goes a low wind
With many a hill-born moan
And many a wandering scent
Out of the land, and we
Peer through the mystery.
So we pass on
Down the long coasts, alone
Down the long coasts at night,
Watching some dreaming light
Far out to sea,
Ever more silent grown
Ever more hushed,
Brood the long coasts.
And many a lonely hill stands up into the grey of night,
And many a silent field of thyme calls wordless through the dark.
And we pass on,
Knowing the strange perfume
Of Earth’s old rheum,
And the earth-flowers that stud the dusk, unpent
The unseen marigolds that we have crushed
With thoughtless feet
As many another green wild life,
So we pass on.
Down the long coasts we wander on
The long, long coasts that spread so far;
And pass by, silent, where upon great downs
Stands a vast tent of clouded blackness, where no light
Has ever shone.
And we pass on
With quicker feet upon the long grey coasts.
And hark!
Far voices call from out the low, hushed bays,
And memory replies like some lost silvern sound
That wanders on with sweet forlornness
Along the waiting coasts.
And out of the sombrest greys
Come answering calls,
And memory answers back again
With unheard murmurs of long sundered joys
And many a long quiet pain.
So we pass on and on
By a strange sea
Down the long coasts that lead us ever on
Into Eternity.
EIGHT BELLS
Eight bells have struck. The “look-out” and the “wheel”
Are changed, and wearily they go below
To rest awhile from winds that coldly blow;
And through the ocean drives the silent keel.
And through the ocean drives the silent keel,
And bears the sleeping and the living on;
Until a dozen leagues of ocean gone,
The bell calls out to wake for “watch” and “wheel”.
* * * * *
And so in life the bell is ever chiming,
Chiming to wake the watchers at their birth,
Ringing for those who watch has ceased on earth,
To sleep a watch amidst the stars far-climbing.
And o’er the world the bell is ever tolling
For watches finished, and for watchers’ rest;
And hast thou watched thine utmost - steered thy best,
Then sleep thou through the aeons, silent rolling.
But when through mists of time a bell’s sweet ringing
Comes chiming in soft notes across the deep,
Then shall thy rested soul from that long sleep
Wake up in Paradise to eternal singing.
GREY SEAS ARE DREAMING OF MY DEATH
I know grey seas are dreaming of my death,
Out in grey plains were foam is lost in sleep,
Where one damp wind wails on continually,
And no life lives in the forgotten air.
And change the mood, and Ha! the fierce winds howl,
And the unforgotten hissing of the foam
Pours out of heaven’s bowl;
And oh! my home
Lifts up its voice in one tremendous chaunt
Greeting! Oh, Greeting!
Ye souls of dust in weary lands
Shall never know that greeting.
Death’s purple shadow tinges all the grey;