POETRY.
THE SALMON RUN.
VAGUE space, and in the hush Dawn's pencil drew On the damp clouds of darkness, line by line, Peaks and vast headlands, and a fresh wind blew Sharp with the stinging kisses of the brine, Pungent with perfume of the sunburnt pine.
Through drifting veils of filmy forest smoke Filtered the rose-pink promise of the day.
The sea plains heaved ; the tide-rip laughing woke; Beyond the sun-limned circle of the bay Ocean a palpitating opal lay Milk-white, mysterious. Throbbing faery fire Coursed through its veins, and all the madcap throng Which cradles in the tide-rip, ocean's choir, In stoles of roughened silver, deep-voiced, strong, Danced as it sang the young tide's meeting-song, Working the sea to madness. Sudden waves Roared by the cliffs, fretted the canopies Written with runes, and echoed in the caves. There was no wind to swing the slender trees, And yet through fields of calm ran racing seas. Strange eddies came and went. The black-toothed rooks Were whelmed in waters piled upon an heap.
Louder and wilder grew the thunder shocks Of the tempestuous rip.' Beyond, the Deep Lay calm and smiling, mother-like, asleep.
Then fell a miracle. The waters knew Some deep sea-call, and their swift tides became Incarnate, and sudden incarnate grew Their shifting lights. Argent and azure flame Drave through the Deep. The salmon pilgrims came.
A foredoomed pilgrimage from depths profound
To grey Alaskan waters, turgid, pent In mildewed pines, where neither sun nor sound Of ocean's song can reach—the last event To rot on glacial mud, frayed, leprous, spent.
OLIVE PHILLIPPS-WOLLEY.
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