Home > Research on Anarchism > History: Anarchism and Anarchists Yesterday and Today > Bio-Bibliographies > C - E > de CLEYRE, Voltairine (born 17 November 1866, Leslie, Michigan - died 6 (...) > Poems by Voltairine de Cleyre > de CLEYRE, Voltairine “The Dirge of the Sea”
de CLEYRE, Voltairine “The Dirge of the Sea”
Thursday 17 September 2009, by
Come! Come! I have waited long!My love is old,My arms are strong;I would woo thee, now,With the wave-kiss coldOn they pallid brow;Thou art mine, thou art mine! My very own!Thine ears shall hearMy eternal moan;Always nearThou’It feel my lips,And the bathing tearWhere my sorrow drips.Thou, my king forever, behold thy throne!Reign in thy majesty, all alone.None! None wept for thee,Nearing the vergeOf eternity!I, thy solemn dirge Will chant for eyeWide as the wave-mergeInto sky.I love thee! Thou art my chosen own!Thy heart, like mine,Was cold as stone,Thine eyes could shineLike my blue waves fair;Thy lips, like wine,Curved to kisses rare!!Hard as my waves were the eyes that shone,And the wine as deadly! Come, love, alone!Float! Float, on the swelling wave!Long is the hearse,Wide the grave;Thy pall is a curseFrom the fading shoreA broken verseFrom a heart wrung sore!"Life’s stream’s wreck-strown!" Ah, like my own!The words are lowAs a dying groan;The voice thrills so,It might rouse thy breastWith pity’s glow,Wert thou like the rest!But thou, my hero, wert never knownTo feel as a human; thou stoodst, alone.Down! Down! Behold the wrecks!I strew the deepWith these human specks!No faith I keepWith their moral trust;See how I heapTheir crumbling dust!I sneered in their faces, my own, my own,As they knelt to prayWhen the ships went down;I flung my sprayIn their dying eyes,And laughed at the wayIt drowned their cries!On the shore they heard the exultant tone,And said: "The Sea laughs." Ah, I laughed alone.Now! Now, we twain shall go,Love-locked,Laughing so! The fools ye mockedWith your tender eyes,The trusts ye rocked With your cradling lies,E’en like these wretches, my own, my own,Shall rot in clayOr crumbled bone,Thou shalt hold thy way,Day-kissed and fair,Where the wild waves playIn the sun-thick air!My arms, my kiss, my tears, my moan,Ye shall know for aye, where we wander lone.Love! Love! Thou wert like to me!Thy luring gazeRolled relentlessly!The marsh-light blazeTo some human soul,Down the darkn’ing mazeTo Ruin’s goal.Ah, how ye crushed them, my beautiful own!Like whistled leavesAround thee stown,Whirled the dead beliefsOf each long-mourned life!Here, no one grieves:Neither tears nor strifeAppeal to the Sea, where its wrecks are thrown!Thou shalt stand in their midst, and smile, alone!Laugh! Laugh! O form of light!Death hidesThy faithless sight!The flowing tidesOf thy heart are still;Yet are wrecks thy brides,For it is my willThat that which on earth made thy heaven,my own,May strew aroundThy eternal throne!The gurgling soundOf the dying cry,The gushing woundOf heart-agony,Were thy joy in life! Now the Sea makes knownThy realm in death! Thy heaven, alone!Years! Years, ye shall mix with me!Ye shall grow a partOf the laughing Sea;Of the moaning heartOf the glittered waveOf the sun-gleam’s dartIn the ocean-grave.Fair, cold, and faithless wert thou, my own!For that I loveThy heart of stone!From the heights aboveTo the depths below,Where dread things move,There is naught can showA life so trustless! Proud be thy crown!Ruthless, like none, save the Sea, alone!— April 1891