Along the Shore

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Along the Shore, by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
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Title: Along the Shore
Author: Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
Release Date: December, 2004 [EBook #7056]?[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]?[This file was first posted on March 3, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: Latin-1
? START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALONG THE SHORE ***
This eBook was produced by Michelle Shephard, Eric Eldred,?Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
ALONG THE SHORE
BY ROSE HAWTHORNE LATHROP
To?G. P. L.
We see the sky,--we love it day by day;?We feel the wind of Spring, from blossoms winging;?We meet with souls tender as tints in May:?For these large ecstasies what are we bringing?
There is no price, best friend, for greatest meed.
Laid on the altar of our true affection,?Wild flowers of love for me must intercede:
And lo! I win your unexcelled protection.
CONTENTS
Inlet And Shore?Impersonality?A Protean Glimpse?Power Against Power?Life's Priestess?Love Now?One And One?The Violin?Gertrude?Unity In Space?The Shell And The Word?The Clock-Tower Bell?Ours To Endure?Broken Waves?Why Sad To-Day??The Ghosts Of Revellers?Life's Burying-Ground?Beyond Utterance?The Suicide?For Others?Zest?The Unperfected?God-Made?A Song Before Grief?Pride: Fate?Francie?Lost Reality?Closing Chords?Grace?Endless Resource?The Baby?A Waltz?First Bloom Of Love?A Wooing Song?Dorothy?Morning Song?Looking Backward?Unloved?The Clock's Song?Broken-Hearted?The Cynic's Fealty?The Girls We Might Have Wed?"Neither!"?Used Up?A Youth's Suicide?Twenty Bold Mariners?In The Artillery?The Lost Battle?The Outgoing Race?Hidden History?A Ballad Of The Mist?The Dreaming Wheel?The Roads That Meet?A PASSING VOICE
ALONG THE SHORE.

INLET AND SHORE.
Here is a world of changing glow,?Where moods roll swiftly far and wide;?Waves sadder than a funeral's pride,?Or bluer than the harebell's blow!
The sunlight makes the black hulls cast?A firefly radiance down the deep;?The inlet gleams, the long clouds sweep,?The sails flit up, the sails drop past.
The far sea-line is hushed and still;?The nearer sea has life and voice;?Each soul may take his fondest choice,--?The silence, or the restless thrill.
O little children of the deep,--?The single sails, the bright, full sails,?Gold in the sun, dark when it fails,?Now you are smiling, then you weep!
O blue of heaven, and bluer sea,?And green of wave, and gold of sky,?And white of sand that stretches by,?Toward east and west, away from me!
O shell-strewn shore, that silent hears?The legend of the mighty main,?And tells to none the lore again,--?We catch one utterance only: "Years!"
IMPERSONALITY
I dreamed within a dream the sun was gold;?And as I walked beneath this golden sun,?The world was like a mighty play-room old,?Made for our pleasure since it was begun.
But when I waked I found the sun was air,?The world was air, and all things only seemed,?Except the thoughts we grow by; for in prayer?We change to spirits such as God has dreamed.
A PROTEAN GLIMPSE.
Time and I pass to and fro,?Hardly greeting as we go,--?Go askant, like crossing wings?Of sea-gulls where the brave sea sings.
Time, the messenger of Fate!?Cunning master of debate,?Cunning soother of all sorrow,?Ruthless robber of to-morrow;?Tyrant to our dallying feet,?Though patron of a life complete;?Like Puck upon a rosy cloud,?He rides to distance while we woo him,--?Like pale Remorse wrapped in a shroud,?He brings the world in sackcloth to him!?O dimly seen, and often met?As shadowings of a wild regret!?O king of us, yet feebly served;?Dispenser of the dooms reserved;?So silent at the folly done,?So deadly when our respite's gone!--?As sea-gulls, slanting, cross at sea,?So cross our rapid flights with thee.
POWER AGAINST POWER.?[Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1864.]
Where spells were wrought he sat alone,?The wizard touching minds of men?Through far-swung avenues of power,?And proudly held the magic pen.
By the dark wall a white Shape gleams,?By morning's light a Shadow falls!?Is it a servant of his brain,?Or Power that to his power calls?
By morning's light the Shadow looms,?And watches with relentless eyes;?In night-gloom holds the glimmering lamp,?While the pen ever slower flies.
By the dark wall it beckons still,?By evening light it darkly stays;?The wizard looks, and his great life?Thrills with the sense of finished days.
A Shape so ghost-like by the sun,?With smiles that chill as dusks descend!?The glancing wizard, stern and pale,?Admits the presence of the End.
Health has forsaken, death is near,?The hand moves slower, eyes grow dim;?The End approaches, and the man?Dreams of no spell for