NOW by a stranger hand the lamp is placed, And little Beatrice no longer lights The star he steered by on the moonless nights; And when, like spirits lost, the sea-bird shrieks, And when close-reefed across the roaring waste, O'er breakers thundering in the shrilly winds, His starless boat his wild home darkly seeks, His eye at last the soulless beacon finds, Thrills to his heart the ray of other years Starred dimly in the dark by gathering tears. In summer evenings, when the isles grow dim, And seas float silvery round the darkened shore, Never again awakes the distant hymn, The laughing, sweet-voiced welcome in the door, The loving prattle and the glad surprise, When down the rocky stair the true steps flies To meet him at the gunwale by the shore. That laughing, loving welcome as of yore, That dancing step will wake again no more. The cold sea breaks along the pebbles there, The door is dark -- the stair is but a stair -- And through the struggling roses, weeds wave high, And summer breezes wildering rock and sigh. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SPOT SIX DIFFERENCES by MARVIN BELL TO A DEAD LOVER by LOUISE BOGAN ESTRANGEMENT by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON THE MAN TO BE by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON A SEA-SHORE GRAVE by SIDNEY LANIER DOMESDAY BOOK: GOTTLIEB GERALD by EDGAR LEE MASTERS THE COMING OF WAR: ACTAEON by EZRA POUND THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON TO A LADY WHO HAD OFFERED HIM A WREATH OF LAUREL by GEORGE SANTAYANA |