A Mystery

I do not know the ocean’s song, 
    Or what the brooklets say; 
At eve I sit and listen long, 
    I cannot learn their lay. 
But as I linger by the sea, 
    And that sweet song comes unto me, 
It seems, my love, it sings of thee.

I do not know why poppies grow, 
    Amid the wheat and rye, 
The lilies bloom as white as snow, 
    I cannot tell you why. 
But all the flowers of the spring, 
    The bees that hum, the birds that sing, 
A thought of you they seem to bring.

I cannot tell why silvery Mars, 
    Moves through the heav’ns at night; 
I cannot tell you why the stars, 
    Adorn the vault with light. 
But what sublimity I see, 
    Upon the mount, the hill, the lea, 
It brings, my love, a thought of thee.

I do not know what in your eyes, 
    That caused my heart to glow, 
And why my spirit longs and cries, 
    I vow, I do not know. 
But when you first came in my sight, 
    My slumbering soul awoke in light, 
And since the day I’ve known no night.

Credit

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on October 26, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.

About this Poem

“A Mystery” was published in For Your Sweet Sake (The John C. Winston Company, 1906), McGirt’s third volume of verse. About the book, literary scholar John W. Parker wrote in his essay “James Ephraim McGirt: Poet of ‘Hope Deferred,’” published in The North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. 31, No. 3 (July 1954), “It so happens that the title of his concluding volume of poems, For Your Sweet Sake (1905), was inspired by his high regard for Irene Gallaway, the one woman whom he loved almost to the point of desperation, but never ventured to marry.”