Classic Poem

We'll hear the uncompanioned murmur of the swell,
And touch the driftwood, delicately grey,
And with our quickened senses smell
The sea-flowers all the day.

We'll count the white gulls pasturing on meadows brown,
And gaze into the arches of the blue,
Till evening's ice comes stealing down
From those far fields of dew.

Now slow the crimson sun-god swathes his eye, and sails
To sleep in his innumerable cloak;
And gentle heat's gold pathway fails
In autumn's opal smoke

Then long we'll watch the journey of the soft half-moon—
A gold-bright moth slow-spinning up the sky,
And know the dark flight—all too soon—
Of land-birds wheeling by.

Through all the black wide night of stars our souls shall touch
The sky, in this long quietude of things,
And gain brief freedom from the clutch
Of life's encompassings.