Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.
By Poems. V. Written on Cramond BeachFrances Anne Kemble (1809–1893)
F
My lingering feet will leave their print no more;
To thy loved side I never may return.
I pray thee, old companion, make due mourn
For the wild spirit who so oft has stood
Gazing in love and wonder on thy flood.
The form is now departing far away,
That half in anger, oft, and half in play,
Thou hast pursued with thy white showers of foam.
Thy waters daily will besiege the home
I loved among the rocks; but there will be
No laughing cry, to hail thy victory,
Such as was wont to greet thee, when I fled
With hurried footsteps, and averted head,
Like fallen monarch, from thy venturous stand,
Chased by thy billows far along the sand.
And when at eventide thy warm waves drink
The amber clouds, that in their bosom sink;
When sober twilight over thee has spread
Her purple pall, when the glad day is dead,
My voice no more will mingle with the dirge
That rose in mighty moaning from thy surge,
Filling with awful harmony the air,
When thy vast soul and mine were joined in prayer.