Harry Kemp - The Shipwrecked Sailor

There blossomed into golden day another rosy morn:
The ship-wrecked sailor woke, and watched again, of hope forlorn,
From his high, purple-misted peak, a rag about his hip:
His only dream, his native land - his only prayer, a ship!
The fringe of surf laced in and out along the shell-strewn shore;
Beside the reef strange creatures sailed plying a sentient oar,
And, great and wide, the sea rolled far in azure distant dim
And laved the edges of the sky with its blue-washing rim.
The sailor thought of paven streets in a far smoky town
Where day and night the cable-cars went booming up and down:
Each little common thought of men smote through him like a dart,
And memories of a woman winged like white birds through his heart.

Harry Kemp

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