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Ralph to Mary.
- LOVE, you have led me to the strand,
- Here, where the stilly, sunset sea,
- Ever receding silently,
- Lays bare a shining stretch of sand ;
- Which, as we tread, in waving line,
- Sinks softly ’neath our moving feet ;
- And looking down our glances meet,
- Two mirrored figures—yours and mine.
- To‐night you found me sad, alone,
- Amid the noisy, empty books
- And drew me forth with those sweet looks,
- And gentle ways which are your own.
- The glory of the setting sun
- Has sway’d and softened all my mood ;
- This wayward heart you understood,
- Dear love, as you have always done.
- Have you forgot the poet wild,
- Who sang rebellious songs and hurl’d
- His fierce anathemas at ‘the world,’
- Which shrugg’d its shoulders, pass’d and smil’d?
- Who fled in wrath to distant lands,
- And sitting, thron’d upon a steep,
- Made music to the mighty deep,
- And thought, ‘Perhaps it understands.’
- Who back return’d, a wanderer drear,
- Urged by the spirit’s restless pain,
- Sang his wild melodies in vain—
- Sang them to ears that would not hear. . . .
- A weary, lonely thing he flies,
- His soul’s fire with soul’s hunger quell’d,
- Till, sudden turning, he beheld
- His meaning—mirrored in your eyes! . . .
- Ah, Love, since then have passed away
- Long years ; some things are chang’d on earth;
- Men say that poet had his worth,
- And twine for him the tardy bay.
- What care I, so that hand in hand,
- And heart in heart we pace the shore ?
- My heart desireth nothing more,
- We understand,—we understand.
