When the Hulk of the World

When the hulk of the world whirls again between

Us for the ships shift me where your dusk is dawn

My skyblue side of the globe, -

Where the mooncast squid's eye of the mobied ocean

Goggles till it gets me in the beam of its brine

O then, sweet claustrophobe

I leave among the lost leaves of St. John's Wood

(So dark, we missed the middle of our road )

Can spring condone, redeem

This treachery of departure from our life

My four fair English seasons and my love?

Seas will be seas, the same :

Thick as our blood may flood; our opposite isles

Chase each other round till the quiet poles

Crack, and the six-days top

Totter, but catch us neither sight nor hold;

Place will be place, limbs may not fold

Their natural death in dreams.

I pray, pray for me on some spring-wet pavement

Where halts the heartprint of our salt bereavement,

Pray over many times

Forgive him the seas forgive him the spring leaf,

All bloom ungathered perishable as grief,

For the hulk of the world's between

And I go like a ghost already gripping on the wind

That lifts us both so lightly but so bound

Never to be ghost alone.