Pictures in Rhyme/Upon the Sands

by Arthur Clark Kennedy

UPON THE SANDS

I took his cheeks between my hands,
⁠I kissed his face and forehead o'er,
Where he lay on the sheeted sands
⁠Which stretched along the shore.

The surf crawled slowly up, and sad,
⁠Like some sea-dog which owned his sway,
And yet had rent him—sightless, mad,
⁠It came and moaned all day.

But there he lay, so still and white;
⁠I dared not weep, I thought he slept.
The tearless day shrank back from night;
⁠I might have woke him had I wept.

The night sank down into the seas,
⁠New morning burst upon the skies;
And with its first breath on the breeze
⁠I stooped and kissed his eyes.

But when he woke not even then,
⁠Although my whispers stirred his hair,
I knew he breathed, away from men,
⁠A higher and a purer air.

The essence of a Godhead's breath,
⁠And that the sleep my darling slept,
Was called of us the body's death—

⁠And then at length I wept.