Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ON THE BEACH, by JOHN GOULD FLETCHER



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ON THE BEACH, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: We lay together on the beach
Last Line: And on my lips are the salt lips of the sea.
Subject(s): Seashore; Beach; Coast; Shore


We lay together on the beach,
About us wavered and drifted the glittering stream of life:
The furious energy of childhood,
The mad assaults of lovers,
The tedious cares and worries of middle age,
The shock, and the final darkness.
And the sea rose and fell all about us,
Grey water upon grey water,
Darkly punctuating our utterance
With its bleak menace of death.

I am a ship departing;
Long farewells on the horizon: --
A tall dark ship
Feeling in its inmost fibres the wash of the sea.
And you are a weed on the beaches,
Or a strange beautiful sea-creature,
Pink and blue, dying
Because I am so far away.

The haze drifts about on the sea;
And the islands that rose in the morning,
Headland beyond white headland,
Are swallowed up in the afternoon.
Yet there seems floating near me
Something blue in the vast grey stillness;
And a lace handkerchief of white foam
Held close in a pale still hand.

With the blue glint of a diamond
The sun strikes upon the water;
Enkindling me, summoning me
To happiness and to despair;
To strange calm sorrows,
And to joys passing away with wet eyes.
Rings and dapples of foam
Seem washing over my heart,
And on my lips are the salt lips of the sea.





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