“i can see a rainbow in your tears as they fall on down / i can see your soul grow through the pain”

Poetry Monday:


A Sea Glimpse, Lucy Larcom

High tide, and the year at ebb:
    The sea is a dream today:
The sky is a gossamer web
    Of sapphire, and pearl, and gray:

A veil over rock and boat;
    A breath on the tremulous blue,
Where the dim sails lie afloat,
    Or, unaware, slip from view.

They veer to the rosy ray;
    They dusk to the violet shade;
Like a thought they flit away;
    Like a foolish hope, they fade.

But listen! a sudden plash!
    A ship is heaving in sight,
With a stir, and a noisy dash
    Of the salt-foam, seething white.

Tar-grimed and weather-stained,
    The sailors shout from her deck:
Naught of the sky blue-veined,
    Or the dreamy waves they reck.

And the sunburnt girl who stands
    Where her feet on the wet wrack slip,
Eyes shaded with lithe, brown hands,
    She sees but the coming ship.


Larcom (1824-93) was a teacher, poet, and magazine editor who spent her teens as a mill-worker in Lowell, MA.

---L.

Subject quote from Rainbow, Sia.