Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, RECOVERY, by EMILIE ROSE MACAULAY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

RECOVERY, by                    
First Line: When this so bitter tide
Last Line: We shall cry and laugh, as sailors and children do.
Alternate Author Name(s): Macaulay, Rose
Subject(s): Navy - United States; Peace; War; American Navy


When this so bitter tide
Shall turn and ebb to the waste whence it came,
The world, like a wrecked ship shorn of her pride,
A battered ship, tipped on a riddled side,
A shattered ship, shall ride
From storm to port, bankrupt of all but shame.

In that dark dawn all we
As lost mariners shall reel crazily
On a new earth, grown stranger than the sea.
As drowned men shall we come,
All pale, all sick, all dumb,
(But some, oh, some
Shall come not even thus, so dumb they be.)

We'll have no words to string, no tales to tell
Of the unutterable
Black dreams dreamt in the drifting deeps of hell.
But little things of earth
Shall stab us through with mirth—
Street lamps, each like a new-sprung celandine,
White daisies and red wine,
And small wise stars that shiver and blink and shine.

So, bankrupt of hope and blind
To faith and love, we'll find,
We, even we, joy in things small and kind.
Though it lie drowned, the world we dreamt we knew,
—Oh, though no dream be true—
We shall cry and laugh, as sailors and children do.





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