Janet Norris Bangs

THERE I know blue, blue water,

And a waving line of land,

With pines that grow in a wind-swept row

As set by a dreamer’s hand;

And where the winds will, in hollow or hill,

Sand and sand and sand.

Sand as soft as a snowfall—

Drifting, eddying, whirled—

Sweeping into the valleys,

Over the grasses swirled,

And billowing up to the tree-tops

That look out on the world.

Sand of romantic patterns

New for each passer fleet.

Here a flower has lain, there the leaf-like chain

That was marked by a sea-gull’s feet;

And the pebbled trace as of scalloped lace

Where the waves and the shore-line meet.

Gleaming sands in the morning

When the little waves run white,

While gay wings fan the shining span

And float a song in flight;

And the lupine blue spreads a heaven new

Where the stars might rest till night.

But gray, gray sands at evening,

When haunting voices blow

Over twilight-faded water

From trees of long ago,

Hushed by the drifting silence

As by eternal snow.

O grass, flowers, trees unfruitful,

Caught while your sun was high,

Buried deep in the sand-dune’s keep,

Is all of life gone by?

Can a springing bough lift your glory now

And give it back to the sky?