| |
| WHERE do I go | |
| Down roads of sleep, | |
| Behind the blue-brimmed day? | |
| No more I know her silvered sweep | |
| Nor colors clear nor gray, | 5 |
| Nor women’s ways | |
| Nor those of men, | |
| Nor blame, nor praise. | |
| Where am I, then? | |
| |
| Oh, fragrantly | 10 |
| The airs of earth arise | |
| In waking hours of light, | |
| While vagrantly | |
| Sea symphonies | |
| Of changing sound surprise; | 15 |
| Till for a space one goes | |
| Beyond the salt and snows | |
| And searching tides along the wide-stretched beach, | |
| Beyond the last, faint reach | |
| Of odor, sight and sound, far forth—far forth— | 20 |
| Where neither South nor North | |
| Points down the roads unguessed, | |
| Where East is not, nor West: | |
| At night down roads of sleep, | |
| Of dreamless sleep, | 25 |
| Past all the compassed ways the reason tells, | |
| To unknown citadels. | |
| |
| Just as one turns, and while day’s dusk-breathed blue | |
| And music, many-dappled, merge in flight, | |
| Half in a dream, one finds a tale is true | 30 |
| That down one’s memory sings, still and light. | |
| Just as the spirit turns, | |
| Half-dreaming one discerns | |
| Deeply the tale is true | |
| That long ago one knew: | 35 |
| Of how a mermaid loved a mortal knight; | |
| And how, unless she died, she still must change, | |
| And leave his human ways, and go alone | |
| At intervals, where seas unfathomed range | |
| Through coral groves around the ocean’s throne, | 40 |
| Where cool-armed mermaids dive through crystal hours, | |
| And braid their streaming hair with pearls, and sing | |
| Among the green and clear-lit water flowers, | |
| The sea-changed splendors of their ocean king. | |
| |
| Like hers our ways on earth, | 45 |
| Who, from our day of birth, | |
| Would die, unless we slept— | |
| Must die, unless for hours, | |
| Beyond our senses’ powers, | |
| Down soundless space we leapt. | 50 |
| |
| Beyond the deepest roll | |
| Of pain’s and rapture’s sweep, | |
| Where goes the human soul | |
| That vanishes in sleep? | |
| |
| Down dreamless paths unguessed, beyond the senses’ powers, | 55 |
| Beyond the breath of fragrance, sound and light— | |
| As once through crystal unremembered hours | |
| The mermaid dived who loved a mortal knight: | |
| Far forth—far forth— | |
| Beyond the South or North, | 60 |
| Past all the compassed ways the day has shown, | |
| To live divine and deep at night down roads of sleep, | |
| In citadels unknown. | |
| |
