A REQUIEM BY THE SEA.

———

BY HELEN IRVING.

———

I hear the sea-waves dashing

And roaring on the shore

But a voice is in their chorus

That I never heard before;

A voice whose sound hath power to fill

My listening soul with dread—

A voice that moans unceasingly,

A wail above my dead.

Moans of a summer midnight

Beneath a foreign sky,

When in the hush of murmuring winds,

Was heard a last, low sigh—

And a noble soul—a soul I loved,

Took flight for the starlit heaven,

And a noble form—a form I loved,

To the starlit deep was given.

Cold is the sea, but colder yet

Is the brow that its waters lave,

And the tide is still in the breast that heaves

To the rock of the restless wave:

The bloom is gone from his glowing cheek

And the love from his pleasant eye,

And none there heed on his pallid lips

The smile that could never die.

Oh, I pine, beloved, to hear once more

Thy cheerful loving tone,

And I pine to feel thy living heart

Throb once against mine own!

I pine for all thy brother-love,

The noble, fond and true—

And my soul is weary for the rest

That in thy heart it knew.

Ah! “nevermore and nevermore”

I hear the sea-waves moan,

And evermore, oh, evermore,

My heart repeats the tone—

And sorrow’s surges rise and fall,

And ebb to flow again,

And each returning billow sounds

Anew the wild refrain.

Oh, Thou, who wept at Bethany,

And in that anguished hour,

Drew near to heal the broken heart

With thy celestial power;

Above the moaning waves of wo

Let me not list in vain,

To hear Thy voice of love divine,

Say “He shall rise again!”