Page:Poems Holley.djvu/179

And she laid her head on his hopeful breast,
And looked with him to the glowing west,
And said, "I will come, I will come to thee
To that fairer land beyond the sea."

And the crimson light changed to daffodil—
To ashen gray, but they stood there still,
And high o'er the west shone the evening star
As still he pictured that home afar—
"The peace and the bliss our own at last
When this dreary parting all is past,
When my heart's dear love, you come to me
In that fairer land beyond the sea."

So he sailed; but saddest 'tis alway
Not for those who go, but for those who stay;
And her sweet eyes gathered a shadow dim
As days went by with no news of him,
And weeks and months, but at last it came,
As the gray moor shone with the sunset flame
Her quick eyes glanced the strange lines o'er,
Then she fell like dead on the cottage floor.

'Twas a stranded ship on a rocky coast,
One true heart brave, when hope was lost,
How he toiled till all the shore had gained,
And only a baby form remained