Canadian Poetry Online top banner link to Canadian Poetry Online home page link to University of Toronto Libraries home page

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


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


Canadian Poetry Online bottom banner link to University of Toronto Libraries home page link to Digital Collections home page link to University of Toronto Library catalogue link to Canadian Poetry Online home page link to University of Toronto Libraries home page link to Contact Information page