Song of the wave / George Cabot Lodge [electronic text]

III

I know it never shall come again,This present peace of the great grave sea And the land that laughs in its sheen of rain, This friendship of nature to you and me, While Autumn smiles on us, big and sane.

It never shall come though our love abide, And this very whisper stirs the grass, While clear and far on the tortured tide As now, the sea-birds cry and pass In years that shall come when our day has died.

It never shall come—must we praise or blame If every day moulds the world anew? Better perhaps, but never the same; If this that we cherish and hold for trueShall wither and fade to an empty name?

'Tis the woe o' the world! As the moments fly I war with time in a great despair, While the first shy star in the purple skySteals through the dead day's golden hair That I love so much though it comes to die.