Classic Poem

Dear Heart, do you remember
That summer by the sea,
One blue night in September
When you were here with me,
How like a pearl uplifted
The full moon rose and drifted,
And how the shadows shifted
Until the stars were free?

Along the beach the breakers
Brought in their lavish store,
Gathered from ocean acres,
And strewed the curving shore;
Grasses that gleamed and glistened,
Flowers that the sea had christened,
Shells at whose lips you listened
To learn their wonder-lore.

Softly the breeze blew over
From groves and gardens fair,
Spilling a scent of clover
Into the balmy air;
The breath of pines around us,
Fragrant it came and found us
Just as the moonlight crowned us
And Love at last came there.

What music hailed our rapture!
What singers on the sand
Were they whose hearts could capture
Our joy and understand?
O Wind and Wave, they guessed it,
They sang it and confessed it, —
Their love and ours, — and blessed it
There on the moonlit strand!

Dear Heart, still sweet the story,
For all the years gone by:
Still floods the moon with glory
The land, the sea, the sky:
And still the night-moth hovers
Around us and discovers
The same devoted lovers, —
Wind, Wave, and You and I.