Poetry
Two Island Songs
The Women to the Seafarers.
FURL, seafarers, furl your sails, No more tempt the clouded seas : Make not gulls your nightingales, Nor tall masts your cherry-trees.
Trust no song the siren sings, Softly sounding from afar—
Sailors, fold your wind-blown wings And rest where the true voices are.
An, be done You'll find no lands So honey-sweet, so fair in flocks ; Only the tides, and sinking sands, And sorrow brooding on the rocks.
Island Rose.
Sim has given all her beauty to the water : She has told her secrets to the tidal bell : And her hair is a moon-drawn net, and it has caught her, And her voice is in the hollow shell.
She will not come back any more now, nor waken Out of her island dream where no wind blows : And only in the small house of the shell, forsaken, Sings the dark one whose face is a rose.
HAIHISH MACLAREN.
Previous page
