No More Learning

They knew not what to say.
I hear the tide, I hear the tide!
7
THE PROOF
By Abigail Fithian Halsey How would I prove my love?
By some fair deed,
Some joyous sacrifice,
Some swift relief
Unto your utmost need,
Some glowing revelation
That, like sunlight on a distant hill, Should show you all my heart
In one glad moment yours.
How do I prove my love?
By standing just aside,
By seeing you go on,
Day after day,
In ways I may not tread; By watching your dear feet Stumble in paths
My word could save you from, Yet never speaking it;
By knowing past all doubting That the day will come, When, all else gone,
Alone,
Deserted,
You will turn your face To meet my waiting eyes, And there
Behold your own.
8
THE SOURCE
By Abigail Fithian Halsey
Dear comrade, do they call you dead? Ah no, not I.
Last night the moon lay white on all the land, A boat was anchored
Here beside the stream.
Oh, 'twas a merry party
Setting forth,
And you were here, And those we loved, And I.
One took the oars
And rowed us toward the hills.
The woods closed in,
The stream grew dark,
And then
The boat was grounded sudden on the shoals,
And I
Said quickly that perhaps
We'd come too far.
Too far, they all agreed,
And turned us back.
Then quietly you rose and stepped ashore, And with a smile to me,
Said,
"I am going on
To find the source,"
And left us there,
And I —
Dear comrade, do they call you dead ? Ah no, not I!
9
YOUR EYES ARE LIKE THE SEA By Leslie Nelson Jennings
Your eyes are like the sea
When air and sky, by some old alchemy,
Draw from the fires of spring The very substance of infinity—
The color of the stars' own conjuring.
. . .
Lost on a desert's parched immensity,
Your eyes
I seemed to be
And thirst had clutched my throat
Like strangler's fingers, while unpityingly
The arrows of the sun upon me smote.
Green promise there was none,
Nor hill to cast a shade, nor upright stone.
And I was dying there
Like some poor stricken beast, unmissed, alone
In God-forgotten vasts of yellow glare.
And then I thought there grew
Still waters on my sight, unshored and blue.
Now, Christ be thanked! I cried,
And ran to plunge my cracking flesh into That blessed lake, to quaff it undenied.
I knelt there, and it seemed, — One moment, that my torture had been dreamed
I drank most thankfully . . .
The blood-red sun bent over me
Your eyes are like the sea—the bitter sea!
. .