The tide

Thus in my mood I love you,

In the drum of my heart’s swift beat,

In the lure of the skies above you

And the earth beneath your feet.

 

Now I can lift and crown you

With the moon’s white empery;

And I can crush and drown you

In my passion’s misty sea.

 

I can swing you high and higher

Than any man of the earth,

Draw you through stars and fire

To lands of the ultimate birth.

 

Were I like this forever

You’d but too little to give,

But here tonight we sever,

For life loves life to live.

 

And the further a man may travel

The further may he fall,

And the skein that I must unravel

Was never meant for all.

 

What do you know of glory,

Of the heights that I have trod?

Or the shadows grim and hoary

That hide my face from God?

 

Would you understand my story,

My torments and my hopes?

Or the dark red Purgatory

Where my soul in horror gropes?

 

Now I am man and lover

Rising with you at side

To peaks where the splendors hover—

But drifting with the tide.

 

And the tide? It is mine to shake it,

To battle the winds and spray;

To batter the tide and break it

Or batter my heart away.

 

So I leave you—that you never

The grim day have to face

When I would be gone forever

And a stranger in my place.

 

Tonight, tonight we sever,

For my race is my own race.

 

Robert Erwin Howard