Or is she but a simple girl,
Whose boy was drowned,
In some cold sea, some stormy morn,
On some blue sound?
THE HEART UNSEEN
So many times the heart can break,
So many ways,
Yet beat along and beat along
So many days.
A fluttering thing we never see,
And only hear
When some stern doctor to our side
Presses his ear.
Strange hidden thing, that beats and beats
We know not why,
And makes us live, though we indeed
Would rather die.
Mysterious, fighting, loving thing,
So sad, so true—
I would my laughing eyes some day
Might look on you.
THE SHIMMER OF THE SOUND
In the long shimmer of the Sound
May I some day be laughing found,
Part of its restless to and fro,
A humble worker of the tides
That round the sleepless planet flow,
And in the rock and drift of things—
(O how the sea-weed sways and swings! Is it her hair—has she been found In the long shimmer of the Sound!)
Do some small task I do not know—
O maybe help the mussel grow,
Or tint the shell-imprisoned pearl—