No More Learning

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!
. . .
Iscreamed. . .
EASTWARD IN THE "COMMONWEALTH" By Esther Morton Smith
She churns her way down the foaming sound; Her feathering paddles dip and shove
And rise again on their endless round
From the nether plunge to the heights above.
Swiftly and quietly down she slips,
A lighthouse to starboard, and one to port,
The colored lanterns of passing ships, A tow of barges, an old gray fort;
And we aboard her are lulled to rest
By the rhythmic beat of her mighty heart,
By the song of the winds from the salt southwest And the wash of the waters her great prows part.
Hark! she is speaking; a fog has fallen, Drifting in from the outer sea.
Mightily over the deep she's calling, "Coming! coming! make way for me! "
Far and faint, yet each moment clearer, Straight as an arrow down the sound,
An old-time freighter is drawing nearer, "City of Taunton" westward bound.
"B-o-o-m" and "B-o-o-m" from afar she hears us, She will pass on our starboard bow,
Out of the drifting fog she nears us, With rush of waters she's passing now.
Then farther, fainter, till she is lost, Forging to westward through the night;
Westward her deep-voiced tones are tossed,
And the ghostly glare of her great searchlight.
While to the eastward holding straight,
With rhythmical thrust and mighty drive,
Every inch of her palpitate, Keenly, powerfully alive,
The "Commonwealth" speeds over the sound As a strong swimmer breasts the sea,
Alert and sure, through a world around,
Wrapped in silence and mystery.
'
And I saw long ships, with their smokestacks leaning
In the white scud and the white foam and the smoky swift spray!
AS I CAME DOWN IN THE HARBOR By Louis Ginsberg
As I came down in the harbor, I saw ships careening — Tall ships with taut sails, bulging slowly away;
As I came down in the harbor, like far swallows flying, Delicate were the sails I saw, poised faint and dim !
. And who —Oh who will it be that will know how my heart went crying With the far ships and to far Spain beneath the sky's frail rim !
THREE POEMS By Mary Morris Duane
In My Need
Once in my need you gave to me A radiant smile,
And I made pause to bide in little while.