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Classic and Contemporary Poetry


HARVEST MOON: 1916 by JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY

Poet Analysis

First Line: MOON, SLOW RISING, OVER THE TREMBLING SEA-RIM
Last Line: LIGHT, EVERLASTING.)
Subject(s): HARVEST; MOON; WOMEN; WORLD WAR I; FIRST WORLD WAR;

Moon, slow rising, over the trembling sea-rim,
Moon of the lifted tides and their folded burden,
Look, look down; and gather the blinded oceans,
Moon of compassion.

Come, white Silence, over the one sea pathway:
Pour with hallowing hands on the surge and outcry,
Silver flame; and over the famished blackness,
Petals of moonlight.

Once again, the formless void of a world-wreck
Gropes its way through the echoing dark of chaos;
Tide on tide, to the calling, lost horizons,
One in the darkness.

You that veil the light of the all-beholding,
Shed your tidings down to the dooms of longing,
Down to the timeless dark; and the sunken treasure,
One in the darkness.

Touch, and harken -- under the shrouding silver, --
Rise and fall of the heart of the sea and its legions
All and one; -- one with the breath of the deathless,
Rising and falling.

Touch and waken, so, to a far hereafter,
Ebb and flow, the deep, and the dead in their longing:
Till at last, on the hungering face of the waters,
There shall be light.

@3(Light of Light, give us to see, for their sake.
Light of Light, grant them eternal peace;
And let Light perpetual shine upon them, --
Light, everlasting.)@1



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