Poem by Edwin John Dove Pratt

The Ground-Swell

Three times we heard it calling with a low,
    Insistent note; at ebb-tide on the noon;
    And at the hour of dusk, when the red moon
Was rising and the tide was on the flow;
Then, at the hour of midnight once again,
    Though we had entered in and shut the door
    And drawn the blinds, it crept up from the shore
And smote upon a bedroom window-pane;
Then passed away as some dull pang that grew
Out of the void before Eternity
    Had fashioned out an edge for human grief;
Before the winds of God had learned to strew
His harvest-sweepings on a winter sea
    To feed the primal hungers of a reef.

1. The Toll of the Bells
2. In Absentia
3. The Secret of the Sea
4. Loss of the Steamship Florizel
5. The Ice-Floes

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