Select poems / by L.H. Sigourney [electronic resource]

EVENING BY THE SEA-SHORE.

WHEN fervid summer crisps the shrinking nerve, And every prismed rock doth catch the ray As in a burning glass, 'tis wise to seek This city of the wave. For here the dews With which Hygeia feeds the flower of life Are ever freshening in their secret founts. Here may'st thou talk with the ocean, and no ear Of gossip islet on thy words shall feed. Send thy free thought upon the winged winds, That sweep the castles of an older world, And what shall bar it from their ivied heights?

—'Tis well to talk with Ocean. Man may cast His pearl of language on unstable hearts, And, thriftless sower! reap the winds again. But thou, all-conquering element, dost grave Strong characters upon the eternal rock, Furrowing the brow that holdeth speech with thee. Musing beneath yon awful cliffs, the soul, That brief shell-gatherer on the shores of time,

One moment trembling on thy crest, and sinks Into the bosom of the boundless wave.

—And see, outspreading her broad, silver scroll Forth comes the moon, that meek ambassador, Bearing Heaven's message to the mighty surge. Yet he, who listeneth to its hoarse reply, Echoing in anger through the channel'd depths Will deem its language all too arrogant, And earth's best dialect too poor to claim Benignant notice from the star-pav'd skies, And man too pitiful to lift himself In the frail armour of his moth-crush'd pride, Amid o'ershadowing nature's majesty.