Читать книгу Verses - Coolidge Susan - Страница 15

  All night the thirsty beach has listening lain,

     With patience dumb,

  Counting the slow, sad moments of her pain;

     Now morn has come,

  And with the morn the punctual tide again.

  I hear the white battalions down the bay

     Charge with a cheer;

  The sun's gold lances prick them on their way,—

     They plunge, they rear,—

  Foam-plumed and snowy-pennoned, they are here!

  The roused shore, her bright hair backward blown,

     Stands on the verge

  And waves a smiling welcome, beckoning on

     The flying surge,

  While round her feet, like doves, the billows crowd and urge.

  Her glad lips quaff the salt, familiar wine;

     Her spent urns fill;

  All hungering creatures know the sound, the sign,—

     Quiver and thrill,

  With glad expectance crowd and banquet at their will.

  I, too, the rapt contentment join and share;

     My tide is full;

  There is new happiness in earth, in air:

     All beautiful

  And fresh the world but now so bare and dull.

  But while we raise the cup of bliss so high,

     Thus satisfied,

  Another shore beneath a sad, far sky

     Waiteth her tide,

  And thirsts with sad complainings still denied.

  On earth's remotest bound she sits and waits

     In doubt and pain;

  Our joy is signal for her sad estates;

     Like dull refrain

  Marring our song, her sighings rise in vain.

  To each his turn—the ebb-tide and the flood,

     The less, the more—

  God metes his portions justly out, I know;

     But still before

  My mind forever floats that pale and grieving shore.