Poems (Craik)/Sitting on the Shore
HE 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.
SITTING ON THE SHORE.
HE 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.
O life, O silent shore, Where we sit patient; O great sea beyond To which we turn with solemn hope and fond, But sorrowful no more: A little while, and then we too shall soar Like white-winged sea-birds into the Infinite Deep: Till then, Thou, Father—wilt our spirits keep.