Henry Augustin Beers (1847–1926)

THE LITTLE creek which yesterday I saw

Ooze through the sedges, and each brackish vein

That sluiced the marsh, now filled and then again

Sucked dry to glut the sea’s unsated maw,

All ebb and flow by the same rhythmic law

That times the beat of the Atlantic main—

They also fastened to the swift moon’s train

By unseen cords that no less strongly draw.

So, poet, may thy life’s small tributary

Threading some bitter marsh, obscure, alone,

Feel yet one pulse with the broad estuary

That bears an emperor’s fleets through half a zone:

May wait upon the same high luminary

And pitch its voice to the same ocean’s tone.