Classic Poem

Beautiful, cold, freshness of light reveals
The black masts, mirrored with their shadowy spars,
The hill-gloom and the sleeping wharf, and steals
Up magical faint heights of fading stars.

I hear the waves, on the long shingle thrown,
Slowly draw backward, plunge, and never cease
Against that sea-sound the earth-stillness lone
Builds vaster in the early light's increase.

O falling blind waves, in my heart you break;
Outcast and far from my own self I seem,
With alien sense in a strange air awake,
The body and projection of a dream.

Turn back, pale Dawn, or bring that light to me
Which yesterday was lost beyond the sea.