Phenomena
Great-enough both accepts and subdues; the great frame takes
all creatures;
From the greatness of their element they all take beauty.
Gulls; and the dingy freightship lurching south in the eye of a
rain-wind;
The airplane dipping over the hill; hawks hovering
The white grass of the headland; cormorants roosting upon the
guano-
Whitened skerries; pelicans awind; sea-slime
Shining at night in the wave-stir like drowned men's lanterns;
smugglers signaling
A cargo to land; or the old Point Pinos lighthouse
Lawfully winking over dark water; the flight of the twilight
herons,
Lonely wings and a cry; or with motor-vibrations
That hum in the rock like a new storm-tone of the ocean's to
turn eyes westward
The navy's new-bought Zeppelin going by in the twilight,
Far out seaward; relative only to the evening star and the ocean
It slides into a cloud over Point Lobos.
poem by Robinson Jeffers
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The Cycle
The clapping blackness of the wings of pointed cormorants,
the great indolent planes
Of autumn pelicans nine or a dozen strung shorelong,
But chiefly the gulls, the cloud-caligraphers of windy spirals
before a storm,
Cruise north and south over the sea-rocks and over
That bluish enormous opal; very lately these alone, these and the
clouds
And westering lights of heaven, crossed it; but then
A hull with standing canvas crept about Point Lobos . . . now
all day long the steamers
Smudge the opal's rim; often a seaplane troubles
The sea-wind with its throbbing heart. These will increase, the
others diminish; and later
These will diminish; our Pacific has pastured
The Mediterranean torch and passed it west across the fountains
of the morning;
And the following desolation that feeds on Crete
Feed here; the clapping blackness of the wings of pointed cormorants,
the great sails
Of autumn pelicans, the gray sea-going gulls,
Alone will streak the enormous opal, the earth have peace like the
broad water, our blood's
Unrest have doubled to Asia and be peopling
Europe again, or dropping colonies at the morning star: what
moody traveler
Wanders back here, watches the sea-fowl circle
The old sea-granite and cemented granite with one regard, and
greets my ghost,
One temper with the granite, bulking about here?
poem by Robinson Jeffers
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Birds
The fierce musical cries of a couple of sparrowhawks hunting
on the headland,
Hovering and darting, their heads northwestward,
Prick like silver arrows shot through a curtain the noise of the
ocean
Trampling its granite; their red backs gleam
Under my window around the stone corners; nothing gracefuller,
nothing
Nimbler in the wind. Westward the wave-gleaners,
The old gray sea-going gulls are gathered together, the northwest
wind wakening
Their wings to the wild spirals of the wind-dance.
Fresh as the air, salt as the foam, play birds in the bright wind,
fly falcons
Forgetting the oak and the pinewood, come gulls
From the Carmel sands and the sands at the river-mouth, from
Lobos and out of the limitless
Power of the mass of the sea, for a poem
Needs multitude, multitudes of thoughts, all fierce, all flesh-eaters,
musically clamorous
Bright hawks that hover and dart headlong, and ungainly
Gray hungers fledged with desire of transgression, salt slimed
beaks, from the sharp
Rock-shores of the world and the secret waters.
poem by Robinson Jeffers
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The Cliffs
They sing of the grandeur of cliffs inland,
But the cliffs of the ocean are truly grand;
And I long to wander and dream and doubt
Where the cliffs by the ocean run out and out.
To the northward far as the eye can reach
Are sandhill, boulder, and sandy beach;
But southward rises the track for me,
Where the cliffs by the ocean run out to sea.
Friends may be gone in the morning fair,
But the cliffs by the ocean are always there;
Lovers may leave when the wind is chill,
But the cliffs by the ocean are steadfast still.
They watch the sea and they ward the land,
And they warn the ships from the treacherous sand;
And I sadly think in the twilight hour
What I might have been had I known my power.
Where the smoke-cloud blurs and the white sails fill,
They point the ships to keep seaward still;
And I think—Ah, me!—and I think—Ah, me!
Of the wreck I’d saved had I kept to sea.
Oh! the cliffs are old and the cliffs are sad,
And they know me sane, while men deem me mad.
Oh! the cliffs are firm and the cliffs are strong,
And they know me right, while men deem me wrong.
And I sometimes think in the dawning gray,
I am old as they, I am old as they;
And I think, I think that in field and town
My spirit shall live till the cliffs come down.
poem by Henry Lawson
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The Gulls
I
Soft is the sky in the mist-kirtled east,
Light is abroad on the sea,
All of the heaven with silver is fleeced,
Holding the sunrise in fee.
Lo! with a flash and uplifting of wings
Down where the long ripples break,
Cometh a bevy of glad-hearted things,
'Tis morn, for the gulls are awake.
II
Slumberous calm on the ocean and shore
Comes with the turn of the tide;
Never a strong-sweeping pinion may soar,
Where the tame fishing-boats ride!
Far and beyond in blue deserts of sea
Where the wild winds are at play,
There may the spirits of sea-birds be free
'Tis noon, for the gulls are away.
III
Over the rim of the sunset is blown
Sea-dusk of purple and gold,
Speed now the wanderers back to their own,
Wings the most tireless must fold.
Homeward together at twilight they flock,
Sated with joys of the deep
Drowsily huddled on headland and rock
'Tis night, for the gulls are asleep.
poem by Lucy Maud Montgomery
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By The Seaside : The Lighthouse
The rocky ledge runs far into the sea,
And on its outer point, some miles away,
The Lighthouse lifts its massive masonry,
A pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day.
Even at this distance I can see the tides,
Upheaving, break unheard along its base,
A speechless wrath, that rises and subsides
In the white lip and tremor of the face.
And as the evening darkens, lo! how bright,
Through the deep purple of the twilight air,
Beams forth the sudden radiance of its light
With strange, unearthly splendor in the glare!
Not one alone; from each projecting cape
And perilous reef along the ocean's verge,
Starts into life a dim, gigantic shape,
Holding its lantern o'er the restless surge.
Like the great giant Christopher it stands
Upon the brink of the tempestuous wave,
Wading far out among the rocks and sands,
The night-o'ertaken mariner to save.
And the great ships sail outward and return,
Bending and bowing o'er the billowy swells,
And ever joyful, as they see it burn,
They wave their silent welcomes and farewells.
They come forth from the darkness, and their sails
Gleam for a moment only in the blaze,
And eager faces, as the light unveils,
Gaze at the tower, and vanish while they gaze.
The mariner remembers when a child,
On his first voyage, he saw it fade and sink;
And when, returning from adventures wild,
He saw it rise again o'er ocean's brink.
Steadfast, serene, immovable, the same
Year after year, through all the silent night
Burns on forevermore that quenchless flame,
Shines on that inextinguishable light!
It sees the ocean to its bosom clasp
The rocks and sea-sand with the kiss of peace;
It sees the wild winds lift it in their grasp,
And hold it up, and shake it like a fleece.
The startled waves leap over it; the storm
Smites it with all the scourges of the rain,
And steadily against its solid form
Press the great shoulders of the hurricane.
The sea-bird wheeling round it, with the din
Of wings and winds and solitary cries,
Blinded and maddened by the light within,
Dashes himself against the glare, and dies.
A new Prometheus, chained upon the rock,
Still grasping in his hand the fire of Jove,
It does not hear the cry, nor heed the shock,
But hails the mariner with words of love.
'Sail on!' it says, 'sail on, ye stately ships!
And with your floating bridge the ocean span;
Be mine to guard this light from all eclipse,
Be yours to bring man nearer unto man!'
poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Twilight Of Freedom
1
Let us glorify, brothers, the twilight of freedom --
The great twilight year.
A weighty forest of nets is lowered
Into the bubbling waters of night.
You are rising into desolate years,
O sun, judge, people.
2
Let us glorify the fateful burden,
Which the nation's chief takes up in tears.
Let us glorify the twilight burden of power,
Its unbearable weight.
Whoever has the heart should hear, time,
How your ship is sinking.
3
We tied the swallows into battle legions
And so, the sun's obscured; all of nature
Warbles, whirls, lives;
The dense twilight through the nets
The sun's obscured, and the land sets sail.
4
But still, let us try: an enormous, awkward,
Screeching turn of the wheel.
The land is sailing. Take courage, men!
Dividing the ocean, like a plow,
We will recall even in Lethe's frost,
That our land cost ten heavens.
poem by Osip Emilevich Mandelstam
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The Shag
"What is that great bird, sister, tell me,
Perched high on the top of the crag?"
"'T is the cormorant, dear little brother;
The fishermen call it the shag."
"But what does it there, sister, tell me,
Sitting lonely against the black sky?"
"It has settled to rest, little brother;
It hears the wild gale wailing high."
"But I am afraid of it, sister,
For over the sea and the land
It gazes, so black and so silent!"
"Little brother, hold fast to my hand."
"Oh, what was that, sister? The thunder?
Did the shag bring the storm and the cloud,
The wind and the rain and the lightning?"
"Little brother, the thunder roars loud.
"Run fast, for the rain sweeps the ocean;
Look! over the light-house it streams;
And the lightning leaps red, and above us
The gulls fill the air with their screams."
O'er the beach, o'er the rocks, running swiftly,
The little white cottage they gain;
And safely they watch from the window
The dance and the rush of the rain.
But the shag kept his place on the headland,
And when the brief storm had gone by,
He shook his loose plumes, and they saw him
Rise splendid and strong in the sky.
Clinging fast to the gown of his sister,
The little boy laughed as he flew;
"He is gone with the wind and the lightning!
And -- I am not frightened, -- are you?"
poem by Celia Thaxter
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Evening Ebb
The ocean has not been so quiet for a long while; five nightherons
Fly shorelong voiceless in the hush of the air
Over the calm of an ebb that almost mirrors their wings.
The sun has gone down, and the water has gone down
From the weed-clad rock, but the distant cloud-wall rises. The
ebb whispers.
Great cloud-shadows float in the opal water.
Through rifts in the screen of the world pale gold gleams, and the
evening
Star suddenly glides like a flying torch.
As if we had not been meant to see her; rehearsing behind
The screen of the world for another audience.
poem by Robinson Jeffers
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The Great Sunset
A flight of six heavy-motored bombing-planes
Went over the beautiful inhuman ridges a straight course northward;
the incident stuck itself in my memory
More than a flight of band-tail pigeons might have done
Because those wings of man and potential war seemed really intrusive
above the remote canyon.
They changed it; I cannot say they profaned it, but the memory
All day remained like a false note in familiar music, and suggested
no doubt
The counter-fantasy that came to my eyes in the evening, on the
ocean cliff.
I came from the canyon twilight
Exactly at sunset to the open shore, and felt like a sudden extension
of consciousness the wild free light
And biting north-wind. The cloud-sky had lifted from the western
horizon and left a long yellow panel
Between the slate-edge ocean and the eyelid cloud; the smoky
ball of the sun rolled on the sea-line
And formless bits of vapor flew across, but when the sun was
down
The panel of clear sky brightened, the rags of moving cloud took
memorable shapes, dark on the light,
Whether I was dreaming or not, they became spears and war-axes,
horses and sabres, gaunt battle-elephants
With towered backs; they became catapults and siege-guns, high-tilted
howitzers, long tractors, armored and turreted;
They became battleships and destroyers, and great fleets of warplanes
... all the proud instruments
Of man imposing his will upon weaker men: they were like a
Roman triumph, but themselves the captives,
A triumph in reverse: all the tools of victory
Whiffed away on the north-wind into a cloud like a conflagration,
swept from the earth, no man
From this time on to exploit nor subdue any other man. I thought,
'What a pity our kindest dreams
Are complete liars,' and turned from the glowing west toward
the cold twilight. 'To be truth-bound, the neutral
Detested by all the dreaming factions, is my errand here.'
poem by Robinson Jeffers
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Where The Land Meets The Ocean
The great white waves of the Pacific how loudly they do roar
And crash against the volcanic rocks that guard the ocean shore
The silver gulls above the beach are calling as they fly
And the terns dive in shallow waters for small sea things from the sky,
The feeling is so refreshing on your skin saltwater spray
'Tis nice to be by the ocean on a breezy Autumn day
In a place far off of the highway and far from the noisy street
A place where Nature reign Supreme where the land and ocean meet
The huge surf waves are rolling foamy and white as snow
At the awesome power of Nature my wonder only grow
Though not a seafaring person from land I love to watch the big waves roll
It has been a watery grave for many an ocean out of control
Where the land meets the ocean on a March evening in the Fall
A memory for to cherish and in the future to recall.
poem by Francis Duggan
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Dark Creatures
I'm calling to you
The creatures of the deep.
The creatures of the dark.
A creation of an ark.
Riding out the storm.
With only you as company.
The powerless feeling.
Watching all my friends and family drown.
Am I'm not able to save them.
One by one they disappear into the expansive blue ocean.
The doctor tells me it was only a dream.
But I know a nightmare when I have one.
Screaming out in the middle of the night.
Where is the shining light.
The heavenly delight.
Isn't that the way I'm suppose to feel?
I'm calling to you
The creatures of the deep.
The creatures of the dark.
A creation of an ark.
Riding out the storm.
With only you as company.
I give you my hand only to slip away.
Continuously falling.
The bottomless pit.
I was dragged in it.
All these corpses souls are looking at me.
Whispering of my guilt.
Screaming out in the middle of the night.
Where is the shining light.
The heavenly delight.
Isn't that the way I'm suppose to feel?
I'm calling to you
The creatures of the deep.
The creatures of the dark.
A creation of an ark.
Riding out the storm.
With only you as company.
Blood starts dripping out of my nose.
And I don't know how it it happen.
For I just woke from this horrible dream.
A splash of cold water to wipe my face clean.
But I still don't feel as if I'm really here.
An outer body experience.
An astral projection of my reflection.
Looking at the second one of you.
Is that really me?
Screaming out in the middle of the night.
Where is the shining light.
The heavenly delight.
Isn't that the way I'm suppose to feel?
I'm calling to you
The creatures of the deep.
The creatures of the dark.
A creation of an ark.
Riding out the storm.
With only you as company.
Screaming out in the middle of the night.
Where is the shining light.
The heavenly delight.
Isn't that the way I'm suppose to feel?
I'm calling to you
The creatures of the deep.
The creatures of the dark.
A creation of an ark.
Riding out the storm.
With only you as company.
With only you as company.
Only you as company.
My dark little creatures.
poem by Ace Of Black Hearts
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The Ports of the Open Sea
Down here where the ships loom large in
The gloom when the sea-storms veer,
Down here on the south-west margin
Of the western hemisphere,
Where the might of a world-wide ocean
Round the youngest land rolls free—
Storm-bound from the world’s commotion,
Lie the Ports of the Open Sea.
By the bluff where the grey sand reaches
To the kerb of the spray-swept street,
By the sweep of the black sand beaches
From the main-road travellers’ feet,
By the heights like a work Titanic,
By a bluff lined coast volcanic
Lie the Ports of the wild South-east.
By the steeps of the snow-capped range,
By the scarped and terraced hills—
Far away from the swift life-changes,
From the wear of the strife that kills—
Where the land in the Spring seems younger
Than a land of the Earth might be—
Oh! the hearts of the rovers hunger
For the Ports of the Open Sea.
But the captains watch and hearken
For a sign of the South Sea wrath—
Let the face of the South-east darken,
And they turn to the ocean path.
Ay, the sea-boats dare not linger,
Whatever the cargo be;
When the South-east lifts a finger
By the Ports of the Open Sea.
South by the bleak Bluff faring,
North where the Three Kings wait,
South-east the tempest daring—
Flight through the storm-tossed strait;
Yonder a white-winged roamer
Struck where the rollers roar—
Where the great green froth-flaked comber
Breaks down on a black-ribbed shore.
For the South-east lands are dread lands
To the sailor in the shrouds,
Where the low clouds loom like headlands,
And the black bluffs blur like clouds.
When the breakers rage to windward
And the lights are masked a-lee,
And the sunken rocks run inward
To a Port of the Open Sea.
But oh! for the South-east weather—
The sweep of the three-days’ gale—
When, far through the flax and heather,
The spindrift drives like hail.
Glory to man’s creations
That drive where the gale grows gruff,
When the homes of the sea-coast stations
Flash white from the dark’ning bluff!
When the swell of the South-east rouses
The wrath of the Maori sprite,
And the brown folk flee their houses
And crouch in the flax by night,
And wait as they long have waited—
In fear as the brown folk be—
The wave of destruction fated
For the Ports of the Open Sea.
Grey cloud to the mountain bases,
Wild boughs that rush and sweep;
On the rounded hills the tussocks
Like flocks of flying sheep;
A lonely storm-bird soaring
O’er tussock, fern and tree;
And the boulder beaches roaring
The Hymn of the Open Sea.
poem by Henry Lawson
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An Early Morning Walk
i had a walk this morning
and i saw twilight
fog hovering still on the feet of the mountains
there is beauty in haze
in the opaqueness of smog
i inhale cold air inside my lungs
and walk faster
there is dew on the grass
as fingers of light comes out from the hazy fog
herons arrive and land on the green fields
catching the frogs
the brown cow is munching grass inside its mouth
still lying comfortably on the ground
the macopa tree shed its leaves
in favor of new shiny ones
the trail is clear
no one has arrived here yet
it is about to rain with all the gray clouds lumping in the sky
ah, i am not running for shelter.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Granite And Cypress
White-maned, wide-throated, the heavy-shouldered children of
the wind leap at the sea-cliff.
The invisible falcon
Brooded on water and bred them in wide waste places, in a bridechamber
wide to the stars' eyes
In the center of the ocean,
Where no prows pass nor island is lifted ... the sea beyond
Lobos is whitened with the falcon's
Passage, he is here now,
The sky is one cloud, his wing-feathers hiss in the white grass,
my sapling cypresses writhing
In the fury of his passage
Dare not dream of their centuries of future endurance of tempest.
(I have granite and cypress,
Both long-lasting,
Planted in the earth; but the granite sea-boulders are prey to no
hawk's wing, they have taken worse pounding,
Like me they remember
Old wars and are quiet; for we think that the future is one piece
with the past, we wonder why tree-tops
And people are so shaken.)
poem by Robinson Jeffers
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In My Wild Flights Of Fancy The Ocean I Can See
The blueness of the saltwater the white waves rolling free
In my wild flights of fancy the ocean i can see
The silver gulls and black backed gulls above the white beach cry
And the sun is shining brightly in the clear and sunny sky,
The children in the shallows they laugh and splash and run
In the coolness of sea water their way of having fun
On a pleasant day in Summer of 25 degrees
And there is a soothing freshness in the freshening ocean breeze,
The distinctive smell of the seaweed washed in by the last tide
A refuge from beach predators for tiny sea things to breed in and hide
Coastal people love the ocean and near the ocean they choose to stay
And in the coastal cemeteries their last remains do lay
The rumble of the ocean the white waves running free
And in my flights of fancy the sea is calling me.
poem by Francis Duggan
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Dark Crescent Moon Waves
Walking on the beach,
Staring at the sea of eternity
on how it is so serene at night,
watching the dark water is lit up by the crescent moon that is sunken
into the sea of life
Hearing the water crashing to the beach,
and seeing the swirling twilight sky is reflected on the dark water,
like it's the mirror to my soul
The push and pull of the waves,
is cursed by the black magic that moons hold
a curse that is so beautiful and so powerful
Like a picture in a sky
that is burn to my mind,
The dark mist of cloud covering the moon and sky like a blanket,
but sailing in the dark sea sky
Soon the sky of twilight fades away
as the phoenix's sun rise breaking through the clouds of dusk
and now the sea becomes in rage
as tides come down like god's hammer
and the sun's lights the sea in emerald green
The ocean is like another realm of life
where can it be beautiful and dangerous
poem by RyuOh Kenshin
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Night
The ebb slips from the rock, the sunken
Tide-rocks lift streaming shoulders
Out of the slack, the slow west
Sombering its torch; a ship's light
Shows faintly, far out,
Over the weight of the prone ocean
On the low cloud.
Over the dark mountain, over the dark pinewood,
Down the long dark valley along the shrunken river,
Returns the splendor without rays, the shining of shadow,
Peace-bringer, the matrix of all shining and quieter of shining.
Where the shore widens on the bay she opens dark wings
And the ocean accepts her glory. O soul worshipful of her
You like the ocean have grave depths where she dwells always,
And the film of waves above that takes the sun takes also
Her, with more love. The sun-lovers have a blond favorite,
A father of lights and noises, wars, weeping and laughter,
Hot labor, lust and delight and the other blemishes. Quietness
Flows from her deeper fountain; and he will die; and she is
immortal.
Far off from here the slender
Flocks of the mountain forest
Move among stems like towers
Of the old redwoods to the stream,
No twig crackling; dip shy
Wild muzzles into the mountain water
Among the dark ferns.
O passionately at peace you being secure will pardon
The blasphemies of glowworms, the lamp in my tower, the
fretfulness
Of cities, the cressets of the planets, the pride of the stars.
This August night in a rift of cloud Antares reddens,
The great one, the ancient torch, a lord among lost children,
The earth's orbit doubled would not girdle his greatness, one fire
Globed, out of grasp of the mind enormous; but to you O Night
What? Not a spark? What flicker of a spark in the faint far
glimmer
Of a lost fire dying in the desert, dim coals of a sand-pit the
Bedouins
Wandered from at dawn . . . Ah singing prayer to what gulfs
tempted
Suddenly are you more lost? To us the near-hand mountain
Be a measure of height, the tide-worn cliff at the sea-gate a
measure of continuance.
The tide, moving the night's
Vastness with lonely voices,
Turns, the deep dark-shining
Pacific leans on the land,
Feeling his cold strength
To the outmost margins: you Night will resume
The stars in your time.
O passionately at peace when will that tide draw shoreward?
Truly the spouting fountains of light, Antares, Arcturus,
Tire of their flow, they sing one song but they think silence.
The striding winter giant Orion shines, and dreams darkness.
And life, the flicker of men and moths and the wolf on the hill,
Though furious for continuance, passionately feeding, passionately
Remaking itself upon its mates, remembers deep inward
The calm mother, the quietness of the womb and the egg,
The primal and the latter silences: dear Night it is memory
Prophesies, prophecy that remembers, the charm of the dark.
And I and my people, we are willing to love the four-score years
Heartily; but as a sailor loves the sea, when the helm is for harbor.
Have men's minds changed,
Or the rock hidden in the deep of the waters of the soul
Broken the surface? A few centuries
Gone by, was none dared not to people
The darkness beyond the stars with harps and habitations.
But now, dear is the truth. Life is grown sweeter and lonelier,
And death is no evil.
poem by Robinson Jeffers
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None See The Beauty Of The Other
A thirsty oarsman
Took a gulp of sea water
And spit it on the ocean's face.
The ocean was irritated
And quizzed: what are you doing!
The oarsman quipped:
Why you are roaring
And keep on earth worthless
As being tasting salt
Not worth to drink
To quench a thirsty!
It was the rivers
Running to me in tears
Worried about their parting
With the ravines they loved
That made me bitter with salt!
The ocean quivered and spelt.
The oarsman found
A lot of fauna moving
Up to surface and moving
Down to the heart of ocean.
He retreated with no word
In reply to challenge ocean!
At night, the stars
Talked to the ocean
Of their beauty of shining eyes,
They told the ocean
That they look bright
Of their celestial charisma
While looking on the ocean
The ocean with Moorish eyes
That wide open in surprise
Tell the stars that she
Never had seen the beauty
Of the stars that look down
But her beauty alone
In the deep eyes of the stars!
poem by Vadakkumpurath Ramesan
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Flower-De-Luce: The Bells Of Lynn. Heard At Nahant
O curfew of the setting sun! O Bells of Lynn!
O requiem of the dying day! O Bells of Lynn!
From the dark belfries of yon cloud-cathedral wafted,
Your sounds aerial seem to float, O Bells of Lynn!
Borne on the evening wind across the crimson twilight,
O'er land and sea they rise and fall, O Bells of Lynn!
The fisherman in his boat, far out beyond the headland,
Listens, and leisurely rows ashore, O Bells of Lynn!
Over the shining sands the wandering cattle homeward
Follow each other at your call, O Bells of Lynn!
The distant lighthouse hears, and with his flaming signal
Answers you, passing the watchword on, O Bells of Lynn!
And down the darkening coast run the tumultuous surges,
And clap their hands, and shout to you, O Bells of Lynn!
Till from the shuddering sea, with your wild incantations,
Ye summon up the spectral moon, O Bells of Lynn!
And startled at the sight like the weird woman of Endor,
Ye cry aloud, and then are still, O Bells of Lynn!
poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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St. Andrew's Bay
NIGHT.
Ah, listen through the music, from the shore,
The 'melancholy long-withdrawing roar';
Beneath the Minster, and the windy caves,
The wide North Ocean, marshalling his waves
Even so forlorn--in worlds beyond our ken -
May sigh the seas that are not heard of men;
Even so forlorn, prophetic of man's fate,
Sounded the cold sea-wave disconsolate,
When none but God might hear the boding tone,
As God shall hear the long lament alone,
When all is done, when all the tale is told,
And the gray sea-wave echoes as of old!
MORNING.
This was the burden of the Night,
The saying of the sea,
But lo! the hours have brought the light,
The laughter of the waves, the flight
Of dipping sea-birds, foamy white,
That are so glad to be!
'Forget!' the happy creatures cry,
'Forget Night's monotone,
With us be glad in sea and sky,
The days are thine, the days that fly,
The days God gives to know him by,
And not the Night alone!'
poem by Andrew Lang
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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