Thomas Edward Brown

Ibant Obscuræ

  To-night I saw three maidens on the beach,
       Dark-robed descending to the sea,
  So slow, so silent of all speech,
       And visible to me
  Only by that strange drift-light, dim, forlorn,
  Of the sun's wreck and clashing surges born.

  Each after other went,
       And they were gathered to his breast—
  It seemed to me a sacrament
      Of some stern creed unblest:
  As when to rocks, that cheerless girt the bay,
  They bound thy holy limbs, Andromeda.