| Higginson and Bigelow, comps. American Sonnets. 1891. | | | | Tò Pân | | By Henry Augustin Beers (1847–1926) |
| | | THE LITTLE creek which yesterday I saw | |
| Ooze through the sedges, and each brackish vein | |
| That sluiced the marsh, now filled and then again | |
| Sucked dry to glut the sea’s unsated maw, | |
| All ebb and flow by the same rhythmic law | 5 |
| That times the beat of the Atlantic main— | |
| They also fastened to the swift moon’s train | |
| By unseen cords that no less strongly draw. | |
| So, poet, may thy life’s small tributary | |
| Threading some bitter marsh, obscure, alone, | 10 |
| Feel yet one pulse with the broad estuary | |
| That bears an emperor’s fleets through half a zone: | |
| May wait upon the same high luminary | |
| And pitch its voice to the same ocean’s tone. | | | | |
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