The world lay there beneath his eye;
The sun had left the heavens to float
A hand-breadth from him, and the sky
Was but an anchor for his boat.
Fled was the class-room's puny space—
His eye saw but a whirling disk;
His old and language-weathered face
Shone like a glowing asterisk!
What chance had he now to remember
The year held months so saturnine
As ill-starred May and blank September,
With that brute tugging at his line?
The Flood Tide
He paused a moment by the sea,
Then stooped, and with a leisured hand
He wrote in casual tracery
Her name upon the flux of sand.
The waves beat up and swiftly spun
A silver web at every stride;
He watched their long, thin fingers run
The letters back into the tide.
But she had written where the tide
Could never its grey waters fling;
She watched the longest wave subside
Ere it could touch the lettering.