Classic Poem

The cove's a shining plate of blue and green,
With darker belts between
The trough and crest of the slow-rising swell,
And the great rocks throw purple shadows down,
Where transient sun-sparks wink and burst and drown
And glimmering pebbles lie too deep to tell,
Hidden or shining as the shadow wavers.
And everywhere the restless sun-steeped air
Trembles and quavers,
As though it were
More saturate with light than it could bear.

Now come the swimmers from slow-dripping caves,
Where the shy fern creeps under the veined roof,
And wading out meet with glad breast the waves.
One holds aloof,
Climbing alone the reef with shrinking feet,
That scarce endure the jagged stones' dull beat,
Till on the edge he poises
And flies to cleave the water, vanishing
In wreaths of white, with echoing liquid noises,
And swims beneath, a vague, distorted thing.
Now all the other swimmers leave behind
The crystal shallow and the foam-wet shore
And sliding into deeper water find
A living coolness in the lifting flood,
And through their bodies leaps the sparkling blood,
So that they feel the faint earth's drought no more.
There now they float, heads raised above the green,
White bodies cloudily seen,
Farther and farther from the brazen rock,
On which the hot air shakes, on which the tide
Fruitlessly throws with gentle, soundless shock
The cool and lagging wave. Out, out they go,
And now upon a mirrored cloud they ride
Or turning over, with soft strokes and slow,
Slide on like shadows in a tranquil sky.
Behind them, on the tall, parched cliff, the dry
And dusty grasses grow
In shallow ledges of the arid stone,
Starving for coolness and the touch of rain
But, though to earth they must return again,
Here come the soft sea airs to meet them, blown
Over the surface of the outer deep,
Scarce moving, staying, falling, straying, gone,
Light and delightful as the touch of sleep. …

One wakes and splashes round,
And, as by magic, all the others wake
From that sea-dream, and now with rippling sound
Their rapid arms the enchanted silence break.
And now again the crystal shallows take
The gleaming bodies, whose cool hour is done;
They pause upon the beach, they pause and sigh,
Then vanish in the caverns one by one.

Soon the wet foot-marks on the stones are dry:
The cove sleeps on beneath the unwavering sun.