A JEALOUS LOVER 
43 
Ripples break foamless, where the golden coasts 
Echo their mellow cadence.  Such delight 
Is on me I would fain sigh into sleep 
Until my love comes forth to dream with me 
Of silent words of love and peopled stars 
Where we may live and love and never weep 
Nor yet be weary.  The last ruby bars 
Are sunk beneath the sea.  The shadows creep 
More on me as I quicken with desire 
My love is all of gold, my faith is deep 
Lit with my heart’s imperishable fire. 
 
3 
 
Pale spectres of the stars, corpse-lights, bad-ghosts  
Sicken the icy glamour of the moon 
Upon the vacant earth ;  and where the sea 
Marshals sepulchral billows, obscene hosts 
Of harpies gibber weirdly.  I should swoon 
For the silence, rolled not some dread minstrelsy 
In fearful anguish on the shuddering air, 
Breathing out terror and lightning to the night 
That wildly echoes back Hell’s venomous spite, 
And shrieks aloud the watchword of despair 
To draw each painracked nerve more tense and gray