Poems (Kennedy)/High Tide
HIGH TIDE
NO sign of rocks; the crescent beach That showed all golden with the noon,Has disappeared beneath the reach Of serpent-twisting waves that hymn A world-dirge to the moon.
Too deep for cavernous call the reef Is hid; above it, full and free,But with a silence hushed and brief, The waters flow far up the strand— 'Tis high tide on the sea.
And in the lives of men there falls Sometimes, like shadows from their lair,A calm like this; when passion palls And love and hate are stricken dumb— The high tide of despair.
And in the silence hushed and dread They catch the sound of funeral clodOn passions spent and anger dead; And putting forth a groping hand Amid the dark, they touch at last The patient hand of God.