Newfoundland Verse

Sea Variations



MORNING


Old, old is the sea to-day.

A sudden stealth of age

Has torn away

The texture of its youth and grace,

And filched the rose of daybreak from its waters.

Now lines of grey

And dragging vapors on its brow

Heavily are drawn;

And it lies broken as with centuries,

Though yesterday,

Blue-eyed and shadowless as a child's face,

It held the promise of a luminous dawn;

Though through its merry after-hours

It bade the sun to pour

Its flaming mintage on the ocean floor

That by a conjuror's touch was turned

To rarer treasure manifold,

Where jacinth, emerald and sapphire burned—

A fringe around a core of gold....

Old, old is the sea to-day,

Forsaken, chill and grey,

And banished is the glory of its waters;

Though through the silent tenure of the night

It bade the sterile moon to multiply

A thousand-fold its undivided light,

Within the nadir of a richer sky;

When every star a thousand cressets glowed

That, caught in wider conflagration, sent

Vast leagues of silver fire wherever flowed

The waters of its shoreless firmament.

But old and grey

Is the sea to-day,

With the morning colors blanched upon its waters.