Nocturne

At the close of a day in December
I went by the winter sea,
And my soul was a fading ember
In abysms of immensity.

Then God spake out of the gloaming.
Where the wave gave over strife.
And fell, wan, feeble, and foaming —
" Man, what hast thou done with life?"

I was ware of a mournful throbbing.
Of a seapulse on the shore,
And I heard in it women sobbing.
Whom I loved and who loved me of yore.

In a rift of the cloudy distance
Lay blood from the fallen sun.
While the wind, with a low insistence,
Like a breaking heart moaned on.

O blithely the sun ascended
With carol of bird and breeze !
And now, his career being ended.
He fell through the leafless trees,
Amid sighing sounds of seas.
Do the life and the work fail wholly
For a man who hath lived and loved ?
Through the joy and the melancholy
With finishing hand God moved.