The gale shouts in the outer waves
Amid a world of gaping graves;
Against the dyke each great surge raves,
Blind battering like a bull.
The dyke! The dyke! The brute sea shakes
The sheltering wall. It breaks,—it breaks!
The sharp salt whips her face, and wakes
The dreamer from her dream.
The great flood lifts. It thunders in.
The broad marsh foams, and sinks. The din
Of waves is where her world has been;—
Is this—is this the dream?
—— One moment in that surging hell
The old wharf shook, then cringed and fell.
—— Then came a lonely hulk, the ‘Belle,’
And drove athwart the waste.
. . . . . . . . . .
They know no light, nor any star,
Those ruined plains of Tantramar.
And where the maid and lover are
They know nor fear nor haste.
IV
After the flood on Tantramar
The fisher-folk flocked in from far.
They stopped the breach; they healed the scar.
Once more the marsh grew green.
But at the marsh’s inmost edge,
Where a tall fringe of flag and sedge
Catches a climbing hawthorn hedge,
A lonely hulk is seen.
It lies forgotten of all tides,
The grass grows round its bleaching sides,
An endless inland peace abides
About its mouldering age.
But in the cot-door on the height
An old man sits with fading sight,
And memories of one cruel night
Are all his heritage.
And at her spinning-wheel within
The mother’s hands forget to spin,—
So weary all her days have been
Since Margery went away.