FLOOD-TIDE.

All night the thirsty beach has listening lain,

With patience dumb,

Counting the slow, sad moments of her pain;

Now morn has come,

And with the morn the punctual tide again.

I hear the white battalions down the bay

Charge with a cheer;

The sun's gold lances prick them on their way,—

They plunge, they rear,—

Foam-plumed and snowy-pennoned, they are here!

The roused shore, her bright hair backward blown,

Stands on the verge

And waves a smiling welcome, beckoning on

The flying surge,

While round her feet, like doves, the billows crowd and urge.

Her glad lips quaff the salt, familiar wine;

Her spent urns fill;

All hungering creatures know the sound, the sign,—

Quiver and thrill,

With glad expectance crowd and banquet at their will.

I, too, the rapt contentment join and share;

My tide is full;

There is new happiness in earth, in air:

All beautiful

And fresh the world but now so bare and dull.

But while we raise the cup of bliss so high,

Thus satisfied,

Another shore beneath a sad, far sky

Waiteth her tide,

And thirsts with sad complainings still denied.

On earth's remotest bound she sits and waits

In doubt and pain;

Our joy is signal for her sad estates;

Like dull refrain

Marring our song, her sighings rise in vain.

To each his turn — the ebb-tide and the flood,

The less, the more —

God metes his portions justly out, I know;

But still before

My mind forever floats that pale and grieving shore.