Am meisten gelesen ▸
Hazel Hall
My days are like sands; colourless,
Each matched to each, unerringly
They drift. The salt bleach of a sea
Has washed them clean and lustreless;
The teeth of rock on ragged strands
Have ground them to an even grey,
And one wind blows them a one way.
But Oh, the slow making of sands.
All is here; forgotten things
Mix with the unforgettable.
Granite blends with tinted shell.
And nothing so stable that it clings
To its stability. Had there
Been more of marble, more of gold.
The sands would hide in their grim hold
Nothing more wise, nothing more fair.
Its huge red prow
Uplifted in a tragic attitude,
It waits out there; the seas around
Bubble and hiss with moaning sound:
In sight of port at the gates of the sea,
It waits upreared expectantly.
It has known the joy of battle,
It has known the shock of wreck:
The spray coated its planking,
The sands swallow its deck:
Monument of the sea,
That knows and that forgets eternally.
It heaves its scarred brow towards the city:
The city pays it little heed:
Indifferent, brutal, without pity,
Stern cargo-steamers trudge and speed;
A SCALLOP shell, loosed by the lifting tide,
Had left a friendly shore, the seas to brave ;
Its lips of pink and snowy hollow shone
Pure in the sun, a pearl upon the wave.
It gleamed and passed — you burdened it with love,
With sweet long futures, new and dreamy days :
And named for me — because I held your hopes.
I bid you hush — not meriting your praise.
I pointed, as your vessel came to shore,
Wrecked where the tiny breakers rose and fell ;
And bid your voyagers not put to sea
So frail a craft as this poor scallop shell.
Life ushers some as heirs-elect
To weather wind and gale;
Here lies a man whose ships were wrecked
Ere he could hoist a sail.