POETRY.
THE TIDE.
THE heavy burden of the sun Fell from the stooping day. A sighing air was felt to run From seaward over the bay.
Then in the shallow waters and the pools, Sand-rippled treasuries of fallen tides, And rocky clefts full vision-deep, To whose calm wells the eyeshaft glides Wonderingly, while expectation cools To merman greetings, and cold sleep Under blunt-fingered weeds, A little movement of the sea Came in to greet them, to wake their lethargy, Stirring them from isolated dreams With new, insistent, inter-running streams, That crept around the ridges of the sand, Making innumerable partings, innumerable joins, Until they lapped the bases of the groynes. Sandworm spirals, near an inch in height, Slowly dissolved, and little shells, on dry land, Were neared, and touched, and tipped, Then quietly, suddenly into the water dipped, And rebaptized with colour and cold flame, Such as the nereids in their bosoms frame, Laying between their pearly breasts at night Mortal enchantments, but seagods' delight.
Slowly the sandy wastes, the dark and dank Heaps of the drifted weeds, sank . . . sank, Kissed once again with the light.enamoured lips Of the wavelets running with laughter and ripple of spray Into the shallows and hollows and folds of the bay, Clean as the mirth at the bows of deepsea ships.
Then rank on rank the foremost waves swept in, Arches of beauty, moulded with light therein, Western colours ; on their backs the rainbow ray, Creatures born of midocean and robed in the fall of day.
And now, where the curves of the beach were lifeless and dull, Is water, dancing and deep, swinging and clear, Wilful and changeful, swift as the wing of the gull ; While the deep-toned songs of the oceimides draw near.
RICHARD CHURCH.
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