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"It well may be just as you say,

Will Carver, that your tales are true;

Yet think what I must put away,

Will Carver, if sail with you."

"If you should sail with me (the wind

Is west, the tide's at full, my men!)

The things that you have left behind

Will be as nothing to you then."

"Inland, it's June! And birds sing

Among the wooded hills, I know;

Between green fields, unhastening,

The Nashwaak's shadowed waters flow.

"What know you of such things as these

Who have the grey sea at your door,—

Whose path is as the strong winds please

Beyond this narrow strip of shore?"

"Your fields and woods! Now, answer me:

Up what green path have your feet run

So wide as mine, when the deep sea

Lies all-uncovered to the sun?

And down the hollows of what hills

Have you gone—half so glad of heart

As you shall be when our sail fills

And the great waves ride far apart?"

"O! half your life is good to live,

Will Carver; yet, if I should go,

What are the things that you can give

Lest I regret the things I know!

"Lest I desire the old life's way?

The noises of the crowded town?

The busy streets, where, night and day,

The traffickers go up and down?"

"What can I give for these? Alas,

That all unchanged your path must be!

Strange lights shall open as we pass

And alien wakes traverse the sea;

"Your ears shall hear (across your sleep)

New hails, remote, disquieted,

For not a hand-breadth of the deep

But has to soothe some restless dead.

"These things shall be. And other things,

I think, not quite so sad as these!

—Know you the song the rigging sings

When up the opal-tinted seas

"The slow south-wind comes amorously?

The sudden gleam of some far sail

Going the same glad way as we,

Hastily, lest the good wind fail?

"The dreams that come (so strange, so fair!)

When all your world lies well within

The moving magic circle where

The sea ends and the skies begin?"......

......"What port is that, so far astern,

Will Carver? And how many miles

Shall we have run ere the tide turn?

—And is it far to the farthest isles?"

IV. THE GHOST.

Just where the field becomes the wood

I thought I saw again

Her old remembered face—made grey

As it had known the rain.

The trees grow thickly there; no place

Has half so many trees;

And hunted things elude one there

Like ancient memories.

The path itself is hard to find,

And slopes up suddenly;

—In the old days it was a path

None knew so well as we.

The path slopes upward, till it leaves

The great trees far behind;

—I met her once where the slender birch

Grow up to meet the wind.

Where the poplars quiver endlessly

And the falling leaves are grey,

I saw her come, and I was glad

That she had learned the way.

She paused a moment where the path

Grew sunlighted and broad;

Within her hair slept all the gold

Of all the golden-rod.

And then the wood closed in on her.

And my hand found her hand;

She had no words to say, yet I

Was quick to understand.

I dared to look in her two eyes;

They too, I thought, were grey:

But no sun shone, and all around

Great, quiet shadows lay.

Yet, as I looked, I surely knew

That they knew nought of tears,—

But this was very long ago,

—A year, perhaps ten years.

All this was long ago. Today,

Her hand met not with mine;

And where the pathway widened out

I saw no gold hair shine.