I could not paint, nor could I draw The look that searched the night; The bleak refinement of the face I saw In lantern light.
A cunning hand might seize the crag, Or stay the flight of a gull, Or the rocket's flash; or more--the lightning jag That lit the hull.
But as a man born blind must steal His colors from the night By hand, I had to touch that face to feel It marble white.
Tell me thy secret, O Sea, The mystery sealed in thy breast; Come, breathe it in whispers to me, A child of thy fevered unrest.
It's midnight, and from me has sleep Flown afar, like a bird on the wing, All tired is my heart as I weep Through a winter that knows not a spring.
Why dost thou respond to my plea With only a minor refrain? Thy voice in a moan floats to me, As an echo sobbed from my pain.
Hast thou a grief, too, like mine, That never heals with the years; A bosom entombing a shrine Bedewed with the waste of thy tears?
Where lies my loved one to-night Beneath thy grey mantle so wide? I would that his slumber were light, To wake with the flow of the tide.
Should he not wake, bear him this, An amaranth plucked from my heart; Wreathe it soft in his dreams with a kiss, Then return, and ere I depart.
On the flood of my soul's overflow. Borne on by my grief from the wild Of this storm-beaten life, let me know How he slept; let me know if he smiled.
What changed thy face from that of yesterday, Great Sea! that with thy mothering hands outspread And smiling on our common life, didst lay The table covers for our daily bread?
To-day, held by the thresh of iron shocks Within the vortex of a lightless fate, Thy hands are tearing seaweed on the rocks, And thou--a stark and wild inebriate.
The rust of hours, Through a year of days, Has dulled the edge of the pain; But at night A wheel in my sleep Grinds it smooth and keen.
By day I remember A face that was lit With the softness of human pattern; But at night It is changed in my sleep To a bygone carved in chalk.
A cottage inland Through a year of days Has latched its doors on the sea; But at night I return in my sleep To the cold, green lure of the waters.
_"The dog that saved the lives of more than ninety persons in that recent week, by swimming with a line from the sinking vessel to the shore, well understood the importance as well as the risk of his mission."--Extract from a Newfoundland paper._