The Flowering of the Rod (Excerpts)

IV

Blue-geese, white-geese, you may say,

yes, I know this duality, this double nostalgia;

I know the insatiable longing

in winter, for palm-shadow

and sand and burnt sea-drift;

but in the summer, as I watch

the wave till its edge of foam

touches the hot sand and instantly

vanishes like snow on the equator,

I would cry out, stay, stay;

then I remember delicate enduring frost

and its mid-winter dawn-pattern;

in the hot noon-sun, I think of the grey

opalescent winter-dawn; as the wave

burns on the shingle, I think,

you are less beautiful than frost;

but it is also true that I pray,

O, give me burning blue

and brittle burnt sea-weed

above the tide-line,

as I stand, still unsatisfied,

under the long shadow-on-snow of the pine.