Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, BY THE SEA, by LEWIS MORRIS (1833-1907)



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

BY THE SEA, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: A little country churchyard
Last Line: For aught but the needs of the day.
Subject(s): Sea; Ocean


A LITTLE country churchyard,
On the verge of a cliff by the sea;
Ah! the thoughts of the long years past and gone
That the vision brings back to me

For two ways led from the village, --
One, by the rippled sands,
With their pink shells fresh from the ebbing wave
For childish little hands.

And one by the breezy cliff-side,
All splendid with purple and gold,
With its terrible humble-bees trumpeting deep,
And butterflies fair to behold.

And the boom of the waves on the shingle,
And hymn of the lark to the sun;
Made Sabbath sounds of their own, ere the chime
Of the church-going bell had begun.

I remember the churchyard studded
With peasants who loitered and read
The sad little legends, half effaced,
On the moss-grown tombs of the dead.

And the gay graves of little children,
Fashioned like tiny cots;
With their rosemary and southernwood,
And blue-eyed forget-me-nots.

Till the bell by degrees grew impatient,
Then ceased as the parsonage door
Opened wide for the surpliced vicar,
And we loitered and talked no more.

I remember the cool, dim chancel,
The drowsy hum of the prayers:
And the rude psalms vollied from seafaring throats
As if to take heaven unawares.

Till, when sermon-time came, by permission
We stole out among the graves,
And saw the great ocean a-blaze in the sun,
And heard the deep roar of the waves.

And clung very close together,
As we spelt out with pitying tears,
How a boy lay beneath who was drowned long ago,
And was "Aged eleven years."

And heard, with a new-born wonder,
The voice of the infinite Sea,
Whose hither-shore is the shore of Death,
And whose further, the Life to be.

"Did the sea swallow up little children?
Could God see the wickedness done?
Nor spare one swift-winged seraph to save
From the thousands around His throne?"

"Was he still scarce older than we were,
Still only a boy of eleven?
Were child-angels children always
In the sorrowless courts of heaven?"

Ah me! of those childish dreamers,
One has solved the last riddle since then:
And knows the dread secret which none may know
Who walk in the ways of men.

The other has seen the splendour
And mystery fading away;
Too wise or too dull to take thought or care
For aught but the needs of the day.





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