| |
| LIKE driftwood burning in the grate— | |
| Salt with the boundless sea, | |
| Glowing with all the changing fate | |
| That drove it far and held it late— | |
| Broken and beaten you may be, | 5 |
| But sad experience leaps and flies | |
| To light and color in your eyes. | |
| |
| Like wreckage tossing with the tide, | |
| Borne from we know not where, | |
| The wildness of the waves you ride, | 10 |
| However much your face may hide, | |
| Has left its mark of foul and fair; | |
| And brave experience leaps and plays | |
| About my dreams of your dead days. | |
| |
| Like love before a driftwood fire, | 15 |
| I watch the colors warm | |
| Paint on your cheeks each old desire, | |
| Make you a thing I might aspire | |
| To hold and shelter from the storm. | |
| This is your lure, to drift wind-tossed, | 20 |
| Compass and soul and rudder lost. . . . . . . . . | |
| The firelight dies. Our fancies part. | |
| I, with the world, must shut my heart. | |
| Poor wasted beauty! It must be— | |
| The changing tide sweeps out to sea. | 25 |
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