To my
MOTHER
by
E.J.
Pratt
The Ryerson Press
Publishers Toronto
COPYRIGHT, CANADA, 1923
BY THE RYERSON PRESS
CONTENTS
Sea Variations
The Toll of the Bells
The Ground-Swell
Magnolia Blossoms
The Ice-Floes
?
The Shark
The Fog
The Big Fellow
The Morning Plunge
In Absentia
The Flood Tide
The Pine Tree
In Lantern Light
The Secret of the Sea
Loss of the Steamship Florizel
The Drowning
Monologues And Dialogues
I Carlo
II Overheard by a Stream
III Overheard in a Cove
IV The Passing of Jerry Moore
V The History of John Jones
Creatures of Another Country
I The Bird of Paradise
II The Epigrapher
Ode to December, 1917
Newfoundland
Flashlights and Echoes from the years of 1914 and 1915
The Great Mother
In Memoriam
The Hidden Scar
Evening
In a Beloved Home
The Conclusion of "Rachel"
A Fragment from a Story
MORNING
Old, old is the sea to-day.
A sudden stealth of age
Has torn away
The texture of its youth and grace,
And filched the rose of daybreak from its waters.
Now lines of grey
And dragging vapors on its brow
Heavily are drawn;
And it lies broken as with centuries,
Though yesterday,
Blue-eyed and shadowless as a child's face,
It held the promise of a luminous dawn;
Though through its merry after-hours
It bade the sun to pour
Its flaming mintage on the ocean floor
That by a conjuror's touch was turned
To rarer treasure manifold,
Where jacinth, emerald and sapphire burned—
A fringe around a core of gold....
Old, old is the sea to-day,
Forsaken, chill and grey,
And banished is the glory of its waters;
Though through the silent tenure of the night