Page:Posthumous poems (IA posthumousswinb00swin).pdf/225

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THE GHOST OF IT[1]

In my poems, with ravishing rapture,
Storm strikes me, and strokes me, and stings;
But I'm scarcely the bird you might capture
Out of doors in the thick of such things.
I prefer to be well out of harm's way,
When tempest makes tremble the tree,
And the wind with armipotent arm-sway
  Makes soap of the sea.

Hanging hard on the rent rags of others
Who before me did better, I try
To believe them my sisters and brothers,
Though I know what a low lot am I.
Truth dawns on time's resonant ruin
Frank, fulminant, fragrant and free,
And apparently this is the doing
  Of wind on the sea.

  1. This parody of a chorus in By the North Sea, was written in 1880, and was originally intended to occupy a position in Heptalogia, published in that year. It was, however, ultimately discarded in favour of Nephelidia.

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