Somewhere I read, in an old book whose name
Is gone
from me, I read that when the days
Of a man are counted,
and his business done,
There comes up the shore at
evening, with the tide,
To the place where he sits, a
boat--
And in the boat, from the place where he sits, he
sees,
Dim in the dusk, dim and yet so familiar,
The
faces of his friends long dead; and knows
They come for
him, brought in upon the tide,
To take him where men go
at set of day.
Then rising, with his hands in theirs, he
goes
Between them his last steps, that are the first
Of the new life--and with the ebb they pass,
Their shaken
sail grown small upon the moon.
Often I thought of
this, and pictured me
How many a man who lives with
throngs about him,
Yet straining through the twilight for
that boat
Shall scarce make out one figure in the stern,
And that so faint its features shall perplex him
With
doubtful memories--and his heart hang back.
But
others, rising as they see the sail
Increase upon the
sunset, hasten down,
Hands out and eyes elated; for they
see
Head over head, crowding from bow to stern,
Repeopling their long loneliness with smiles,
The faces
of their friends; and such go forth
Content upon the ebb
tide, with safe hearts.
But never
To worker
summoned when his day was done
Did mounting tide bring in
such freight of friends
As stole to you up the white
wintry shingle
That night while they that watched you
thought you slept.
Softly they came, and beached the
boat, and gathered
In the still cove under the icy stars,
Your last-born, and the dear loves of your heart,
And all
men that have loved right more than ease,
And honor above
honors; all who gave
Free-handed of their best for other
men,
And thought their giving taking: they who knew
Man's natural state is effort, up and up--
All these were
there, so great a company
Perchance you marvelled,
wondering what great ship
Had brought that throng
unnumbered to the cove
Where the boys used to beach their
light canoe
After old happy picnics--
But these,
your friends and children, to whose hands,
Committed, in
the silent night you rose
And took your last faint
steps--
These led you down, O great American,
Down to
the Winter night and the white beach,
And there you saw
that the huge hull that waited
Was not as are the boats
of the other dead,
Frail craft for a brief passage; no,
for this
Was first of a long line of towering transports,
Storm-worn and ocean-weary every one,
The ships you
launched, the ships you manned, the ships
That now,
returning from their sacred quest
With the thrice-sacred
burden of their dead,
Lay waiting there to take you forth
with them,
Out with the ebb tide, on some farther quest. |
