Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/355

 KENNST DU?

you know the blue of the Carib Sea

Far out where there's nothing but sky to bound

The gaze to windward, the glance to lee,—

More deep than the bluest spaces be

Betwixt white clouds in heaven's round?

Have you seen the liquid lazuli spread

From edge to edge, so wondrous blue

That your footfall's trust it might almost woo,

Were it smooth and low for one to tread?

So clear and warm, so bright, so dark,

That he who looks on it can but mark

'T is a different tide from the far-away

Perpetual waters, old and gray,

And can but wonder if Mother Earth

Has given a younger ocean birth.

Do you know how surely the trade-wind blows

To west-sou'west, through the whole round year?

How, after the hurricane comes and goes,

For nine fair moons there is naught to fear?

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 325