dots-menu
×

Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Grant H. Code

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Sea Quatrains

Grant H. Code

I
TOO fast the silly white-caps run

Their helter-skelter races;

They stumble when the goal is won

And fall upon their faces.

II
A purple light is shaken over

The greener ocean shadows,

Like clover on the cooler depths

Of grass in upland meadows,

III
The sea hangs kelp upon the sand

Like garlands on a grave,

Mourning the dead and silent land

With every living wave.

IV
The breakers thunder in the night

With which the sea is drenched.

Only one plunging line is white;

Even the stars are quenched.

V
The fairest ship ever a wreck

Had not so white a sail

As this fair wave cast up to break,

Driven before the gale.