Sea-Weeds
Written in Exile
By Annie Chambers Ketchum
Friend of the thoughtful mind and gentle heart!
Beneath the citron-tree—
Deep calling to my soul’s profounder deep—
I hear the Mexique Sea.
While through the night rides in the spectral surf
Along the spectral sands,
And all the air vibrates, as if from harps
Touched by phantasmal hands.
Bright in the moon the red pomegranate flowers
Lean to the Yucca’s bells,
While with her chrism of dew, sad Midnight fills
The milk-white asphodels.
Watching all night—as I have done before—
I count the stars that set,
Each writing on my soul some memory deep
Of Pleasure or Regret;
Till, wild with heart-break, toward the East I turn,
Waiting for dawn of day;—
And chanting sea, and asphodel and star
Are faded, all, away.
Only within my trembling, trembling hands—
Brought unto me by thee—
I clasp these beautiful and fragile things,
Bright sea-weeds from the sea,
Fair bloom the flowers beneath these Northern skies,
Pure shine the stars by night,
And grandly sing the grand Atlantic waves
In thunder-throated might;
But, as the sea-shell in her chambers keeps
The murmur of the sea,
So the deep-echoing memories of my home
Will not depart from me.
Prone on the page they lie, these gentle things!
As I have seen them cast
Like a drowned woman’s hair, along the beach,
When storms were over-past;
Prone, like mine own affections, cast ashore
In Battle’s storm and blight;
Would they had died, like sea-weeds! Pray forgive me
But I must weep to-night.
Tell me again, of Summer fields made fair
By Spring’s precursing plough;
Of joyful reapers, gathering tear-sown harvests—
Talk to me,—will you?—now!