Low-Tide

        These wet rocks where the tide has been,
            Barnacled white and weeded brown
        And slimed beneath to a beautiful green,
            These wet rocks where the tide went down
        Will show again when the tide is high
            Faint and perilous, far from shore,
        No place to dream, but a place to die,--
            The bottom of the sea once more.
        There was a child that wandered through
            A giant's empty house all day,--
        House full of wonderful things and new,
            But no fit place for a child to play.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

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Edna St. Vincent Millay

Elegy

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simple Poetry

Sonnets VII

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simple Poetry

Elaine

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simple Poetry

Burial

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

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Exiled

        Searching my heart for its true sorrow,
            This is the thing I find to be:
        That I am weary of words and people,
            Sick of the city, wanting the sea;

        Wanting the sticky, salty sweetness
            Of the strong wind and shattered spray;
        Wanting the loud sound and the soft sound
            Of the big surf that breaks all day.

        Always before about my dooryard,
            Marking the reach of the winter sea,
        Rooted in sand and dragging drift-wood,
            Straggled the purple wild sweet-pea;

        Always I climbed the wave at morning,
            Shook the sand from my shoes at night,
        That now am caught beneath great buildings,
            Stricken with noise, confused ...

Edna St. Vincent Millay

The Tides

I saw the long line of the vacant shore,
    The sea-weed and the shells upon the sand,
    And the brown rocks left bare on every hand,
    As if the ebbing tide would flow no more.
Then heard I, more distinctly than before,
    The ocean breathe and its great breast expand,
    And hurrying came on the defenceless land
    The insurgent waters with tumultuous roar.
All thought and feeling and desire, I said,
    Love, laughter, and the exultant joy of song
    Have ebbed from me forever!    Suddenly o'er me
They swept again from their deep ocean bed,
    And in a tumult of delight, and strong
    As youth, and beautiful as youth, upbore me.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Low Tide At St. Andrews

(NEW BRUNSWICK)

The long red flats stretch open to the sky,
Breathing their moisture on the August air.
The seaweeds cling with flesh-like fingers where
The rocks give shelter that the sands deny;
And wrapped in all her summer harmonies
St. Andrews sleeps beside her sleeping seas.

The far-off shores swim blue and indistinct,
Like half-lost memories of some old dream.
The listless waves that catch each sunny gleam
Are idling up the waterways land-linked,
And, yellowing along the harbour's breast,
The light is leaping shoreward from the west.

And naked-footed children, tripping down,
Light with young laughter, daily come at eve
To gather dulse and sea clams and then heave
Their loads, returning laden to the town,
Leaving a strange grey sil...

Emily Pauline Johnson

Inland

        People that build their houses inland,
            People that buy a plot of ground
        Shaped like a house, and build a house there,
            Far from the sea-board, far from the sound

        Of water sucking the hollow ledges,
            Tons of water striking the shore,--
        What do they long for, as I long for
            One salt smell of the sea once more?

        People the waves have not awakened,
            Spanking the boats at the harbor's head,
        What do they long for, as I long for,--
            Starting up in my inland bed,

        Beating the narrow walls, and finding
            Neither a window nor a door,
        Screaming to God for death by drowning,--
            One salt taste of the sea once mor...

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Eel-Grass

        No matter what I say,
            All that I really love
        Is the rain that flattens on the bay,
            And the eel-grass in the cove;
        The jingle-shells that lie and bleach
            At the tide-line, and the trace
        Of higher tides along the beach:
            Nothing in this place.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

The Rock Pool

This is the sea. In these uneven walls
    A wave lies prisoned. Far and far away
Outward to ocean, as the slow tide falls,
    Her sisters through the capes that hold the bay
Dancing in lovely liberty recede.
    Yet lovely in captivity she lies,
Filled with soft colours, where the wavering weed
    Moves gently and discloses to our eyes
Blurred shining veins of rock and lucent shells
    Under the light-shot water; and here repose
Small quiet fish and dimly glowing bells
    Of sleeping sea-anemones that close
Their tender fronds and will not now awake
Till on these rocks the waves returning break.

Edward Shanks