Helen Hoyt. The Stone-age Sea. Harriet Monroe, ed. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912-22

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22.

The Stone-age Sea

By Helen Hoyt


From “In a Certain City” NEVER has ship sailed on that sea
Nor ray of tower shone on it;
Motionless, without desire or memory,
Like a great languorous sea of stone it lies.
And as these ledges of rock on which they sit—	5
So stony, so unseeing—are the eyes
Of this strange folk who from the naked shore
Look ever beyond them to the aged face
Of the waters. One with the hoar
Mighty boulders they seem, one with the deep:	10
These the first beings of the first rude race
Of time. Their hearts are still locked asleep,
So lately from the gray marble were they torn:
And all the multitudes of the world are yet unborn.