The Story
of Saville
As I ran to and fro on the strand
In search of the treasures the sea
Must certainly bring to my hand.
But thousands of waves have come in,
Mere bubbles and foam as their freight,—
Oh, weary the watching has been,
And still do I hungrily wait,
For what? for a morsel of bread,
Though scarce if it comes within reach
Can I rouse from this apathy dead,
So famished I wait on the beach!
And Kyrle mused silent, while slowly his mind, as whelmed in the gulf-stream’s drift,
Swirled far in a vague speculation: This poetic, this perilous gift,
Whose owner may dwell in the ultimate stars and is free of a fairy-knoll,
Who heareth the grass give thanks to the rain, who readeth a dragon-fly’s soul,
Who trembles at night to list the winds conspire and whisper and plot,
Who of choice is blind to all false foul things and seeth but that which is not,
How can a creature like this endure humanity’s sordid lot—
How sink from its rosy and opal haunts in filmy Elysian tracts
