On a beautiful summer day, this untitled poem from Lucy Meacham Thruston’s Songs of the Chesapeake (1905) seems apropos. The poem is one of hundreds by WLCB members that we will be including in our forthcoming anthology, Parole Femine: Words and Lives of the WLCB.
Enjoy–especially if you’re one of the lucky ones to be at the beach this week! Here’s the poem.
Under the old gray wharf
The waters ebb and flow;
And the jellied nettles, with milk white tentacles
Pulse, and curl, and beat the barnacles
On the wave-worn piles below.
There’s a low swift hush,
And a short crisp rush
Where the gray blue streak, with the wind
at its heel,
Runs with the rippling and dark curled wave;
till we feel
Our boat and our sails are a-flush.
So ho swing wide the sail
Where lasts this feathery gale!–
With toss and turn, with quiver and strain,
and rushing sound
Of music made by waters cleft, filling the
air around
So ho, we sail! We sail!
See, through the misty flow,
Green and blue, the bright rainbow
Curves at our keel. The cloud is past: with shimmering haze
Now runs the stream like molten silver ’neath the rays
Of the sun strong his glow.
The sail hangs loose against the mast
There’s not a breath: so fast
Sped wind and wave together. Peacefully now we rest
With rock and lurch, soft cradled on the river’s breast-
The tide has turned at last.
Borne homeward by the tide
And splashing oar along our side
We reach the wharf–Quick, slip the mast,
And seek that cool green shade betwixt the piles.–How fast
The ripples form and break and float away at last–
Now listen to their song–
It is the eternal flow
Of waves that ever go
Running to the sea.
It has an under moan
That touches the deepest tone
In the heart of you and me.
