Page:Poems Craik.djvu/166

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148
SITTING ON THE SHORE.
SITTING ON THE SHORE.
THE tide has ebbed away:
No more wild dashings 'gainst the adamant rocks,
Nor swayings amidst sea-weed false that mocks
  The hues of gardens gay:
  No laugh of little wavelets at their play:
No lucid pools reflecting heaven's clear brow—
Both storm and calm alike arc ended now.

  The rocks sit gray and lone:
The shifting sand is spread so smooth and dry,
That not a tide might ever have swept by
  Stirring it with rude moan:
  Only some weedy fragments idly thrown
To rot beneath the sky, tell what has been:
But Desolation's self has grown serene.

  Afar the mountains rise,
And the broad estuary widens out,
All sunshine; wheeling round and round about
  Seaward, a white bird flies.
  A bird? Nay, seems it rather in these eyes
A spirit, o'er Eternity's dim sea
Calling—"Come thou where all we glad souls be.