The Raven's Shadow
Seabird, elemental sprite,
Moulded of the sun and spray-
Raven, dreary flake of night
Drifting in the eye of day-
What in common have ye two,
Meeting 'twixt the blue and blue?
Thou to eastward carriest
The keen savour of the foam,-
Thou dost bear unto the west
Fragrance from thy woody home,
Where perchance a house is thine
Odorous of the oozy pine.
Eastward thee thy proper cares,
Things of mighty moment, call;
Thee to westward thine affairs
Summon, weighty matters all:
I, where land and sea contest,
Watch you eastward, watch you west,
Till, in snares of fancy caught,
Mystically changed ye seem,
And the bird becomes a thought,
And the thought becomes a dream,
And the dream, outspread on high,
Lords it o'er the abject sky.
Surely I have known before
Phantoms of the shapes ye be-
Haunters of another shore
'Leaguered by another sea.
There my wanderings night and morn
Reconcile me to the bourn.
There the bird of happy wings
Wafts the ocean-news I crave;
Rumours of an isle he brings
Gemlike on the golden wave:
But the baleful beak and plume
Scatter immelodious gloom.
Though the flow'rs be faultless made,
Perfectly to live and die-
Though the bright clouds bloom and fade
Flow'rlike 'midst a meadowy sky-
Where this raven roams forlorn
Veins of midnight flaw the morn.
He not less will croak and croak
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poem by William Watson
Added by Poetry Lover
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