| |
| THERE I know blue, blue water, | |
| And a waving line of land, | |
| With pines that grow in a wind-swept row | |
| As set by a dreamer’s hand; | |
| And where the winds will, in hollow or hill, | 5 |
| Sand and sand and sand. | |
| |
| Sand as soft as a snowfall— | |
| Drifting, eddying, whirled— | |
| Sweeping into the valleys, | |
| Over the grasses swirled, | 10 |
| And billowing up to the tree-tops | |
| That look out on the world. | |
| |
| Sand of romantic patterns | |
| New for each passer fleet. | |
| Here a flower has lain, there the leaf-like chain | 15 |
| That was marked by a sea-gull’s feet; | |
| And the pebbled trace as of scalloped lace | |
| Where the waves and the shore-line meet. | |
| |
| Gleaming sands in the morning | |
| When the little waves run white, | 20 |
| While gay wings fan the shining span | |
| And float a song in flight; | |
| And the lupine blue spreads a heaven new | |
| Where the stars might rest till night. | |
| |
| But gray, gray sands at evening, | 25 |
| When haunting voices blow | |
| Over twilight-faded water | |
| From trees of long ago, | |
| Hushed by the drifting silence | |
| As by eternal snow. | 30 |
| |
| O grass, flowers, trees unfruitful, | |
| Caught while your sun was high, | |
| Buried deep in the sand-dune’s keep, | |
| Is all of life gone by? | |
| Can a springing bough lift your glory now | 35 |
| And give it back to the sky? | |
| |
