Poems (Larcom)/The Light-Houses

by Lucy Larcom

THE LIGHT-HOUSES.

TWO pale sisters, all alone,
 On an island bleak and bare,
Listening to the breakers' moan,
 Shivering in the chilly air;
Looking inland towards a hill,
 On whose top one aged tree
Wrestles with the storm-wind's will,
 Rushing, wrathful, from the sea.

Two dim ghosts at dusk they seem,
 Side by side, so white and tall,
Sending one long, hopeless gleam
 Down the horizon's darkened wall.
Spectres, strayed from plank or spar,
 With a tale none lives to tell,
Gazing at the town afar,
 Where unconscious widows dwell.

Two white angels of the sea,
 Guiding wave-worn wanderers home;
Sentinels of hope they be,
 Drenched with sleet, and dashed with foam,
Standing there in loneliness,
 Fireside joys for men to keep;
Through the midnight slumberless
 That the quiet shore may sleep.

Two bright eyes awake all night
 To the fierce moods of the sea;
Eyes that only close when light
 Dawns on lonely hill and tree.
O kind watchers! teach us, too,
 Steadfast courage, sufferance long!
Where an eye is turned to you,
 Should a human heart grow strong.