HARVEST-MOON:1916

HARVEST-MOON

by: Josephine Preston Peabody

MOON, slow rising, over the trembling sea-rim,

Moon of the lifted tides and their folded burden,

Look, look down; and gather the blinded oceans,

Moon of compassion.

 

Come, white Silence, over the one sea pathway:

Pour with hallowing hands on the surge and outcry,

Silver flame; and over the famished blackness,

Petals of moonlight.

 

Once again, the formless void of a world-wreck

Gropes its way through the echoing dark of chaos;

Tide on tide, to the calling, lost horizons,

One in the darkness.

 

You that veil the light of the all-beholding,

Shed your tidings down to the dooms of longing,

Down to the timeless dark; and the sunken treasure,

One in the darkness.

 

Touch, and harken--under the shrouding silver,--

Rise and fall of the heart of the sea and its legions

All and one; -- one with the breath of the deathless,

Rising and falling.

 

Touch and waken, so, to a far hereafter,

Ebb and flow, the deep, and the dead in their longing:

Till at last, on the hungering face of the waters,

There shall be light.

 

(Light of Light, give us to see, for their sake.

Light of Light, grant them eternal peace;

And let Light perpetual shine upon them,--

Light, everlasting.)