“It was a time for mariners to bear a wary eye/ With such a dark conspiracy between the sea and sky”

[larryhammer]

For Poetry Monday:


A Morning Scene, Sarah Mayo

    Amid the rosy fog stole in and out
The little boat; the rower dipped his oar,
    Gleaming with liquid gold; and all about
The red-sailed ships went swimming from the shore.

    Against the canvas, moving to and fro,
The dark forms of the fishermen were seen;
    Around the prow long wreaths of golden glow
Rippled and faded ’mid the wavy green.

    The sea-gulls wheeled around the rocky cape,
And skimmed their long wings lightly o’er the flood;
    The fog rose up in many a spectral shape,
And crept away in silence o’er the wood.

    The sea, from silvery white to deepest blue,
Changed ’neath the changing colors of the sky;
    The distant lighthouse broke upon the view,
And the long land-point spread before the eye.

    Clear as a mirror lay the rock-bound cove;
Far off, one blasted pine against the sky
    Lifted its scraggy form; the crow above
Flapped his black wings, and wound his long shrill cry.

    I paced the beach like some sleep-waking child,
Wrapped in a dream of beauty and of awe;
    Were they ideal visions that beguiled?
Was it my eye, or but my soul that saw?


Sarah Edgarton Mayo (1819-1848) was a Massachusetts-born writer, editor, and Unitarian hymnist.

---L.

Subject quote from The Demon-Ship, Thomas Hood.

Comments

[sovay]

Around the prow long wreaths of golden glow
Rippled and faded ’mid the wavy green.

That's really lovely.

[larryhammer]

It is. There's a couple of excellent moments in there, despite the misstep of the shrill crow.