Flood-Tide.

All night the thirsty beach has listening lain,     With patience dumb,     Counting the slow, sad moments of her pain;     Now morn has come,     And with the morn the punctual tide again.     I hear the white battalions down the bay     Charge with a cheer;     The sun's gold lances prick them on their way,--     They plunge, they rear,--     Foam-plumed and snowy-pennoned, they are here!     The roused shore, her bright hair backward blown,     Stands on the verge     And waves a smiling welcome, beckoning on     The flying surge,     While round her feet, like doves, the billows crowd and urge.     Her glad lips quaff the salt, familiar wine;     Her spent urns fill;     All hungering creatures know the sound, the sign,--     Quiver and thrill,     With glad expectance crowd and banquet at their will.     I, too, the rapt contentment join and share;     My tide is full;     There is new happiness in earth, in air:     All beautiful     And fresh the world but now so bare and dull.     But while we raise the cup of bliss so high,     Thus satisfied,     Another shore beneath a sad, far sky     Waiteth her tide,     And thirsts with sad complainings still denied.     On earth's remotest bound she sits and waits     In doubt and pain;     Our joy is signal for her sad estates;     Like dull refrain     Marring our song, her sighings rise in vain.     To each his turn--the ebb-tide and the flood,     The less, the more--     God metes his portions justly out, I know;     But still before     My mind forever floats that pale and grieving shore.