Poem by Richard Watson Gilder

On the Bay

THIS watery vague how vast! This misty globe,
Seen from this center where the ferry plies,--
It plies, but seems to poise in middle air,--
Soft gray below gray heavens, and in the west
A rose-gray memory of the sunken sun;
And, where gray water touches grayer sky,
A band of darker gray pricked out in lights,--
A diamond-twinkling circlet bounding all;
And where the statue looms, a quenchless star;
And where the lighthouse, a red, pulsing flame;
While the great bridge its starry diadem
Shows through the gray, itself in grayness lost! 

1. The New Day. Part 4. 2. The Mirror
2. The New Day. Part 3. 5. “I Will Be Brave for Thee”
3. The New Day. Part 4. 16. “Love Is Not Bond to Any Man”
4. The New Day. Part 2. 1. Words without Song
5. The Celestial Passion. Part 2. 3. A Madonna of Fra Lippo Lippi

Lucy Montgomery On the Bay ("When the salt wave laps on the long, dim shore")

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