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Why I love thee?
Ask why the seawind wanders,
Why the shore is aflush with the tide,
Why the moon through heaven meanders;
Like seafaring ships that ride
On a sullen, motionless deep;
Why the seabirds are fluttering the strand
Where the waves sing themselves to sleep
And starshine lives in the curves of the sand!
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on April 20, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
Sestine Enchainée
When autumn cloudlets fleck the sky
Straying southward like birds o’er the sea,
When the flickering sunlight on the dunes
Is pale, as seagrasses kissed by the spray,
Seagrasses that knew the summer of yesterday–
Sweet are the dreams on the breeze-blown strand!
The waves have lost their silvery note,
White birds of dreams o’er the dim plain start,
Through the mist is gliding a phantom bark––
What made love open its eyes and part!
to Maurice Maeterlinck
Weird phantoms rise in the dawn-winds blow,
In the land of shadows the dawn-flowers grow;
The night-worn moon yields her weary glow
To the morn-rays that over the dream-waste flow.