| |
| THE RIVER widens to a pathless sea | |
| Beneath the rain and mist and sullen skies. | |
| Look out the window; ’t is a gray emprise, | |
| This piloting of massed humanity | |
| On such a day, from shore to busy shore, | 5 |
| And breeds the thought that beauty is no more. | |
| |
| But see yon woman in the cabin seat, | |
| The Southland in her face and foreign dress; | |
| She bends above a babe, with tenderness | |
| That mothers use; her mouth grows soft and sweet. | 10 |
| Then, lifting eyes, ye saints in heaven, what pain | |
| In that strange look of hers into the rain! | |
| |
| There lies a vivid band of scarlet red | |
| With careless grace across her raven hair; | |
| Her cheek burns brown; and ’t is her way to wear | 15 |
| A gown where colors stand in satin’s stead. | |
| Her eye gleams dark as any you may see | |
| Along the winding roads of Italy. | |
| |
| What dreamings must be hers of sunny climes, | |
| This beggar woman midst the draggled throng! | 20 |
| How must she pine for solaces of song, | |
| For warmth and love to furnish laughing-times! | |
| Her every glance upon the waters gray | |
| Is piteous with some lost yesterday. | |
| |
| I ’ve seen a dove, storm-beaten, far at sea; | 25 |
| And once a flower growing stark alone | |
| From out a rock; I ’ve heard a hound make moan, | |
| Left masterless: but never came to me | |
| Ere this such sense of creatures torn apart | |
| From all that fondles life and feeds the heart. | 30 |
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