Poetry Archives

Good-bye, sweetheart, he said, and clasped her hand,
  And rained his kisses on her tear-wet face;
Then broke away, and in a foreign land.
  For her dear sake, sought gold, that he might place

Love’s jeweled crown upon his queen’s fair brow,
  And pour his hard-won treasures at her feet;
And swore, than Heaven, than life itself, his vow
  To her he held more sacred and more sweet.

She waited as the woman only may
  Whose eyes are blinded oft with unshed tears;
Lines on her forehead grew, and threads of gray;
  The weary days crept into weary years.

“Oh stars, go down! Oh sun, be shrouded now!
  My love comes not; he does not live,” she said;
And brushed the curls he’d kissed back from her brow,
  And pout on mourning for her dead.

And still as oft the day came round that he
  Had left his warm good-bye upon her lips,
As oft she sought the head-land by sea,
  And longing watched the far-off white-sailed ships.

To-day, the low sand-beach was over-strewn;
  Torn sail, and broken spar and human form,
‘Gulfed by the waves, and crushed, and then out-thrown—
  A ship went down in yester-night’s wild storm.

She walked among the debris, and the dead,
  As some sweet mercy-sister on her round,
Scanning each up-turned face with nameless dread,
  For aught of life; her tireless searching found

A babe—a waif with tawny tangled locks,
  And great blue eyes with wonder brimming o’er;
Of all the human freight wrecked on the rocks,
  The only living thing that washed ashore.

A pearl-gemmed golden case upon its breast
  She oped, then stared, her eyes a-sudden wild,
A name, a pictured face told all the rest;
  His name—his face—his child!