Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry.
Volume I. Of Home: of Friendship. 1904. | | | | Poems of Home: I. About Children | | A Parable | | Mathilde Blind (1841–1896) |
| | | BETWEEN the sandhills and the sea | |
| A narrow strip of silver sand, | |
| Whereon a little maid doth stand, | |
| Who picks up shells continually, | |
| Between the sandhills and the sea. | 5 |
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| Far as her wondering eyes can reach, | |
| A vastness heaving gray in gray | |
| To the frayed edges of the day | |
| Furls his red standard on the breach | |
| Between the sky-line and the beach. | 10 |
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| The waters of the flowing tide | |
| Cast up the sea-pink shells and weed; | |
| She toys with shells, and doth not heed | |
| The ocean, which on every side | |
| Is closing round her vast and wide. | 15 |
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| It creeps her way as if in play, | |
| Pink shells at her pink feet to cast; | |
| But now the wild waves hold her fast, | |
| And bear her off and melt away, | |
| A vastness heaving gray in gray. | 20 |
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