Poems (Craik)/Sitting on the Shore

by Dinah Maria 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.

  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.