Page:Poems, now first collected, Stedman, 1897.djvu/162

THE CARIB SEA How the brave wind carries the tide before

Its breath, and on to the southwest shore?

How the Caribbean billows roll,

One after the other, and climb forever,—

The yearning waves of a shoreless river

That never, never can reach its goal?

They follow, follow, now and for aye,

One after the other, brother and brother,

And their hollow crests half hide the play

Of light where the sun's red sword thrusts home;

But still in a tangled shining chain

They quiver and fall and rise again,

And far before them the wind-borne spray

Is shaken on from their froth and foam,—

And for leagues beyond, in gray and rose,

The sundown shimmering distance glows!

—So bright, so swift, so glad, the sea

That girts the isles of Caribbee.

Do you know the green of those island shores

By the morning sea-breeze fanned?

(The tide on the reefs that guard them roars—

Then slips by stealth to the sand.)

Have you found the inlet, cut between

Like a rift across the crescent moon,

And anchored off the dull lagoon

Close by forest fringes green,— 142