Classic Poem

There blossomed into golden day another rosy morn:
The shipwrecked sailor woke, and watched again, of hope forlorn,
From his high, purple-misted peak, a rag about his hip:
His only dream, his native land—his only prayer, a ship!
The fringe of surf laced in and out along the shell-strewn shore;
Beside the reef strange creatures sailed plying a sentient oar,
And, great and wide, the sea rolled far in azure distance dim
And laved the edges of the sky with its bluewashing rim.
The sailor thought of paven streets in a far, smoky town
Where day and night the cable-cars went booming up and down:
Each little common thought of men smote through him like a dart,
And memories of a woman winged like white birds through his heart.