Am meisten gelesen ▸
Stella Benson
My yesterday has gone, has gone and left me tired,
And now to-morrow comes and beats upon the door;
So I have built To-day, the day that I desired,
Lest joy come not again, lest peace return no more,
Lest comfort come no more.
So I have built To-day, a proud and perfect day,
And I have built the towers of cliffs upon the sands;
The foxgloves and the gorse I planted on my way;
The thyme, the velvet thyme, grew up beneath my hands,
Grew pink beneath my hands.
So I have built To-day, more precious than a dream;
And I have painted peace upon the sky above;
And I have made immense and misty seas, that seem
More kind to me than life, more fair to me than love--
More beautiful than love.
I do not yet understand the sea.
A cunning fellow
can put on several faces,
but what world is this
without dissimulation
to meet a cliff and laugh?
October leaves jostle in sedge.
Unleashed greyhound bolts.
Kittiwakes plunge aloof.
Morose sea fidgets.
The nerveless cliff
Will not ground your load.
Even as I came
to a suitable cliff,
clouds opened
to a hawk,
riding wind.
Bowed as an elm under the weight of its beauty,
So earth is bowed, under her weight of splendor,
Molten sea, richness of leaves and the burnished
Bronze of sea-grasses.
Clefts in the cliff shelter the purple sand-peas
And chicory flowers bluer than the ocean
Flinging its foam high, white fire in sunshine,
Jewels of water.
Joyous thunder of blown waves on the ledges,
Make me forget war and the dark war-sorrow--
Against the sky a sentry paces the sea-cliff
Slim in his khaki.
When I came home from wanderings
In a tall chattering ship,
I thought a hundred happy things,
Of people, places, and such things
As I came sailing home.
The tall ship moved how slowly on
With me and hundreds more,
That thought not then of wanderings,
But of unwhispered, longed-for things,
Familiar things of home.
For not in miles seemed other lands
Far off, but in long years
As we came near to England then;
Even the tall ship heard secret things
As she moved trembling home.
It was at dawn. The chattering ship
I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.
I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise.
And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down!
When I come to the end of the land,
I find the sea,
With edges of cliff and breadths of sand
To pleasure me.
When I raise my town-tired eyes
There is blue and white,
Or kings and castles of stormy skies.
Or joy of night.
When I weary of all I see
And tire even of space,
I hold your love in memory.
And your dear face.