Return

How they come back ... I never see retreat Down the long beach the phalanx of bright foam But faint across the fields that fold them home I hear the rhythmic fall of speeding feet. And they who loved the garden of the sea And died, come back. I never know a land Of cities but there come to me Their dead to touch my hand.

Dead, who dare not let your eyes Flower from the dusk and flame into our own, Yet come you as hushed notes in harmonies To ways of life that you have known: Virgil in blowing spray round swift-prowed ships, Dante in every cry of lips for lips.