Part 9 (1/2)

Here I find in a gentled spot The frost of the wild forget-me-not, And -- I cannot forget.

Heart once light as the floating feather Borne aloft in the sunny weather, Spring and winter have come together -- Shall you and she meet yet?

On the rocks and beaches of Carmel the surf is mighty to-day.

Breaker and lifting billow call To the high, blue Silence over all With the word no heart can say.

Time-to-be, shall I hear it ever?

Time-that-is, with the hands that sever, Cry all words but the dreadful ”Never”!

And name of her far away.

Music I heard. [Conrad Aiken]

Music I heard with you was more than music, And bread I broke with you was more than bread; Now that I am without you, all is desolate; All that was once so beautiful is dead.

Your hands once touched this table and this silver, And I have seen your fingers hold this gla.s.s.

These things do not remember you, beloved, -- And yet your touch upon them will not pa.s.s.

For it was in my heart you moved among them, And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes; And in my heart they will remember always, -- They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.

Dusk at Sea. [Thomas S. Jones, Jr.]

To-night eternity alone is near: The sea, the sunset, and the darkening blue; Within their shelter is no s.p.a.ce for fear, Only the wonder that such things are true.

The thought of you is like the dusk at sea -- s.p.a.ce and wide freedom and old sh.o.r.es left far, The shelter of a lone immensity Sealed by the sunset and the evening star.

Old s.h.i.+ps. [David Morton]

There is a memory stays upon old s.h.i.+ps, A weightless cargo in the musty hold, -- Of bright lagoons and prow-caressing lips, Of stormy midnights, -- and a tale untold.

They have remembered islands in the dawn, And windy capes that tried their slender spars, And tortuous channels where their keels have gone, And calm blue nights of stillness and the stars.

Ah, never think that s.h.i.+ps forget a sh.o.r.e, Or bitter seas, or winds that made them wise; There is a dream upon them, evermore; -- And there be some who say that sunk s.h.i.+ps rise To seek familiar harbors in the night, Blowing in mists, their spectral sails like light.

The Wanderer. [Zoe Akins]

The s.h.i.+ps are lying in the bay, The gulls are swinging round their spars; My soul as eagerly as they Desires the margin of the stars.