The Return

Now at last I am at home--
Wind abeam and flooding tide,
And the offing white with foam,
And an old friend by my side
Glad the long, green waves to ride.

Strange how we've been wandering
Through the crowded towns for gain,
You and I who loved the sting
Of the salt spray and the rain
And the gale across the main!

What world honors could avail
Loss of this--the slanted mast,
And the roaring round the rail,
And the sheeted spray we cast
Round us as we seaward passed?

As the sad land sinks apace,
With it sinks each thought of care;
Think not now of aging face;
Question not the whitening hair:
Youth still beckons everywhere.

And the light we thought had fled
From the sky-line glows there now;
Bends the same blue overhead;
And the waves we used to plow
Part in beryl at the bow.

Hours like this we two have known
In the old days, when we sailed
Seaward ere the night had flown,
Or the morning star had paled
Like the shy eyes love has veiled.

Round our bow the ripples purled,
As the swift tide outward streamed
Through a hushed and ghostly world,
Where our harbor reaches seemed
Like a river that we dreamed.

Then we saw the black hills sway
In the waters' crinkled glass,
And the village wan and gray,
And the startled cattle pass
Through the tangled meadow-grass.

Through the glooming we have run
Straight into the gates of day,
Seen the crimson-edgèd sun
Burn the sea's gray bound away--
Leap to universal sway.

Little cared we where we drove
So the wind was strong and keen.
Oh, what sun-crowned waves we clove!
What cool shadows lurked between
Those long combers pale and green!

Graybeard pleasures are but toys;
Sorrow shatters them at last:
For this brief hour we are boys;
Trim the sheet and face the blast;
Sail into the happy past!