Poem by Cale Young Rice

Finitude

    I

    One ruby, amid a diamond spray of stars,
        The coast light flashes;
        The tide plashes,
    Across a mile of bay-sweet land the moon
        Comes soon:
    She has lost half of her lustre and looks old.

    A cricket, finitude's incarnate cry,
    And the infinite waters with their hushless sigh
        Are the two sounds
        The night has:
    Each in eternal wistfulness abounds.


    II

    I have wakened out of my sleep because I too
        Am wistful,
            Tristeful;
    Because I know that half of _me_ is gone,
    And that all frailty cries in the cricket's tone.

    I have wakened out of my sleep to watch and listen.
        For what?
    To see for a moment universes glisten;
    To wonder and want--and go to sleep again,
            And die,
        And be forgot.

1. Off the Irish Coast
2. Cosmism
3. I Know Your Heart, O Sea!
4. Sea-Hoardings
5. To a Firefly by the Sea

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