Margaret

By Rose Hartwick Thorpe

Fair Margaret! beautiful Margaret!
In the hush of the twilight cold.
The sun on a dazzling throne has set
In a cloud of amber and gold;
And the great green waves, with their white caps wet,
O'er the beach to her feet have rolled.

She waits for the lover whose kiss one day
Was pressed on her quivering lips, --
The lover who went from her side away
In one of those swift-sailing ships,
O'er the waves that bright in the sunlight lay
'Neath the glow of its finger-tips.

O the sea! the stormy, tempestuous sea!
The sea with its roar and its gloom, --
The treacherous sea, how it shouts in glee
O'er each jewel-decked coral tomb!
The glorious, grand, resplendent sea,
In the light of a golden noon!

Whenever the shadowy twilight creeps
O'er the earth, with her fair feet wet, --
When the stars come out and the great world sleeps,
When the murmuring waters fret
On the sandy shore, -- then she waits and weeps,
Lonely, sorrowful Margaret!

There she sits alone mid the gleaming sands,
By the shadowy ivied wall,
While over the clasp of her trembling hands
Like a shower the tear-drops fall;
And the sea brings murmurs of far-off lands,
And the blue sky bends over all.

O bring back my lover once! she cries,
As I sit by the sea alone;
O pitiful Father in Paradise!
Stoop down from thy glorious throne,
And grant to the light of my waiting eyes
One glimpse of his face, -- only one!

Now the sea rolls in with a mighty swell, --
Will it bring a curse or a crown?
For, alas! no echoing murmurs tell
Of the home-bound ship that went down
Mid the hidden reefs, with never a knell
From the slumbering harbor town.

All about her the water moans and raves,
She is drenched with the falling sleet;
Something lies dark in the arms of the waves
Where the sky and the waters meet:
Lo! a victim snatched from the coral graves
Is cast on the beach at her feet!

O beautiful Margaret, pale and fair!
By the sea no longer alone;
For two faces lie in the starlight there,
With features like chiselled stone.
And the seaweed drifts from his tangled hair
To the sunny locks of her own.