Classic Poem

The day is sweet in Edgartown,
With scent of fern and scent of sea.
The folk make gay the summer green.
But they are stranger-folk to me.

All day I see the sailors pass,
The children dancing on the pier,
The lovers loitering in their nooks.
Yet no one ever enters here.

But in the evening past my door
From shadowy dunes come winding down
A troop of silent villagers,
The bygone hosts of Edgartown!

Their locks blown out upon the breeze,
The women join the shuffling crew,
And many a little child I've known
Gives a meek hand and follows, too.

“Friends, I have served you bed and food”,
I cry across the rising wet,
“Then stay a moment, O my dead,
Where, lonely, I must linger yet!”