The Sea and the Children.

What are you singing, bright waves of the ocean?
Washing the beach where the little birds run;
Catching the shimmering sunbeams in motion,
Kissing them, tossing them back to the sun.

What are you telling the gay children playing
Knee-deep within your soft salt waves of blue?
Can their young hearts understand what you're saying?
Sweet secrets whispered between them and you.

Does their clear vision behold caverns lying,
Filled with sea wonders, your waters below?
Do their ears hear in your murmuring sighing
Surf on the lonely rocks wheeling gulls know?

Can they hear great winds in night darkness calling
Over your bosom from spaces afar?
Can they feel the great heart of you rising and falling?
See the moon's pale reflection and many a star.

Do they stand spellbound before your great story?
Young hot hearts wistful; though fettered; yet free—
Do they feel the salt tang of your breast old and hoary?—
These are the lads, then, who follow the sea.

—A. Bower Poynter.

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