House by the sea : a poem / Thomas Buchanan Read [electronic text]

I.

ON a little, seaward-sloping lawn,The first bright half-hour after dawn— With golden hair and cheeks as red As the hue in the brightening orient spread, The child and the light of the fisherman's home, Bearing a pail that dript its foam Like snowflakes on the wayside grass, Went singing as if her soul would pass Into the air, and o'ertake that bird Which sang in the sky less seen than heard.

Her path was along the sweetbrier lane, Dividing the sea from the clover plain:

Below the billows inland bore, And threw their foam-wreaths on the shore: Above, the orchards, lightly blown, Scattered their snowy garlands down, As if the very trees would spread A pure white path for her virgin tread.

She plucked a violet from the hedge, And then a flower from the perilous edge Of a cliff where foamed the sea's white ire,— And now a bloom from the wayside brier; Then placed them in her russet vest, To sway to the heaving of her breast.

Descending the steep of the seaside rocks, In pathways worn by the shepherd's flocks, She saw the Stranger, whose cliff-perched home Stood higher than ever the wild sea-foam Could leap; and only the gust of spray, Seeking the cloud, passed up that way.

It might be a moon of dawns, perchance, Since first the stranger met her glance, And never at any later time Than the crimson flush of the morning's prime, With the latest star he walked the shore, And when that failed was seen no more.

They grew acquainted—yet did not speak: There was a sadness on his cheek His smile made sadder; and his look Seemed to reflect some parchment book Writ in a cave by a wizard gray To spirit both body and soul away. Her heart's deep instinct read in his eye How he had sought that height to die; And, as one bears flowers of sweetest bloom To brighten a sick man's twilight room, When now they met, with resistless grace She stood before him—scarce looked in his face, Tendered the blossoms, then quickened her pace.

He pressed them to his lips, and then Strolled round to his cloudy home again.

He climbed to his gusty balcony, That overbrowed the eastern sea: Like a spirit in a dusky cloud, O'erleaning the world in wonder bowed, Pale Roland leaned, and gazed below Into the gulfs — until on the flow Of the billows his fancies seemed to go: And thus to the air and the spirits of air, Those delicate listeners everywhere, He winged his thoughts with careless words, Till they sailed the ocean like sea-born birds.