The Ground Swell

E.J. Pratt
From:   E.J. Pratt: Complete Poems. ed. Sandra Djwa and R.G. Moyles. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989.

Three times we heard it calling with a low,
    Insistent note; at ebb-tide on the noon;
    And at the hour of dusk, when the red moon
Was rising and the tide was on the flow;
Then, at the hour of midnight once again,
    Though we had entered in and shut the door
    And drawn the blinds, it crept up from the shore
And smote upon a bedroom window-pane;
Then passed away as some dull pang that grew
    Out of the void before Eternity
    Had fashioned out an edge for human grief;
Before the winds of God had learned to strew
His harvest-sweepings on a winter sea
    To feed the primal hungers of a reef.


February 1923

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E.J. Pratt's works copyright © to the estate of the author.