ENVOI 



The Sailor's Graveyard <:^ <:> 



(From ToHi(Uis of Conscience) 



T X the churchyard, growing gradually dim and 

 ethereal, were laid many bodies from which 

 the white vampires of the main had sucked out 

 the souls. Here mouldered fisher lads, who 

 had whistled over the nets, and dreamed rough 

 dreams of winning island girls and breeding 

 hardy children. Here reposed old limbs of salty 

 mariners, who had for so long defied the ocean 

 that when they knew themselves taken at the last, 

 they turned their rugged faces down to their enemy 

 with a stony and an ironic womier. And here, 

 too, among these cast-up bodies of the drowned, 

 lay many women who had loved the prey of the 

 sea, and kissed the cheeks turned acrid by its 

 winds and waters. Some of them had died from 

 heart-sickness, cursing the sea. .S<jmc had faded, 

 withering like the pale san«l-roses beside the sea. 

 .Some had lived to old age by emj)ty hearths in 

 the sound of the sea. 



Fii rriptidns fad»;d upon the stones tiiat lay 



2J5 



