Classic Poem

You have come home with old seas in your speech,
And glimmering sea-roads meeting in your mind:
The curve of creeping silver up the beach,
And mornings whose white splendours daze and blind.
You have brought word of ships and where they go,
Their names like music, and the flags they fly:
Steamer ... and barque ... and churning tug and tow,
And a lone sail at sunset blowing by.

Shoreline and mist have still their ancient way:
Through all your speech the sea's long rise and fall
Sound their slow musics in the words you say:--
And I who sit and listen to it all,
Am like an absent lover who would hear
News of one loved, incalculably dear.