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| WHAT are the long waves singing so mournfully evermore? | |
| What are they singing so mournfully as they weep on the sandy shore? | |
| “Olivia, oh, Olivia!”—what else can it seem to be? | |
| “Olivia, lost Olivia, will never return to thee!” | |
| “Olivia, lost Olivia!”—what else can the sad song be?— | 5 |
| “Weep and mourn, she will not return,—she cannot return, to thee!” | |
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| And strange it is when the low winds sigh, and strange when the loud winds blow, | |
| In the rustle of trees, in the roar of the storm, in the sleepiest streamlet ’s flow, | |
| Forever, from ocean or river, ariseth the same sad moan,— | |
| “She sleeps; let her sleep; wake her not. It were best she should rest, and alone.” | 10 |
| Forever the same sad requiem comes up from the sorrowful sea, | |
| For the lovely, the lost Olivia, who cannot return to me. | |
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| Alas! I fear ’t is not in the air, or the sea, or the trees,—that strain: | |
| I fear ’t is a wrung heart aching, and the throb of a tortured brain; | |
| And the shivering whisper of startled leaves, and the sob of the waves as they roll,— | 15 |
| I fear they are only the echo of the song of a suffering soul,— | |
| Are only the passionless echo of the voice that is ever with me: | |
| “The lovely, the lost Olivia will never return to thee!” | |
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| I stand in the dim gray morning, where once I stood, to mark, | |
| Gliding away along the bay, like a bird, her white-winged bark; | 20 |
| And when through the Golden Gate the sunset radiance rolled, | |
| And the tall masts melted to thinnest threads in the glowing haze of gold, | |
| I said, “To thine arms I give her, O kind and shining sea, | |
| And in one long moon from this June eve you shall let her return to me.” | |
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| But the wind from the far spice islands came back, and it sang with a sigh,— | 25 |
| “The ocean is rich with the treasure it has hidden from you and the sky.” | |
| And where, amid rocks and green sea-weed, the storm and the tide were at war, | |
| The nightly-sought waste was still vacant when I looked to the cloud and the star; | |
| And soon the sad wind and dark ocean unceasingly sang unto me, | |
| “The lovely, the lost Olivia will never return to thee!” | 30 |
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| Dim and still the landscape lies, but shadowless as heaven, | |
| For the growing morn and the low west moon on everything shine even; | |
| The ghosts of the lost have departed, that nothing can ever redeem, | |
| And Nature, in light, sweet slumber, is dreaming her morning dream. | |
| ’T is morn and our Lord has awakened, and the souls of the blessed are free. | 35 |
| O, come from the caves of the ocean! Olivia, return unto me! | |
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| What thrills me? What comes near me? Do I stand on the sward alone? | |
| Was that a light wind, or a whisper? a touch, or the pulse of a tone? | |
| Olivia! whose spells from my slumber my broken heart sway and control, | |
| At length bring’st thou death to me, dearest, or rest to my suffering soul? | 40 |
| No sound but the psalm of the ocean: “Bow down to the solemn decree,— | |
| The lovely, the lost Olivia will never return to thee!” | |
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| And still are the long waves singing so mournfully evermore; | |
| Still are they singing so mournfully as they weep on the sandy shore,— | |
| “Olivia, lost Olivia!” so ever ’t is doomed to be,— | 45 |
| “Olivia, lost Olivia will never return to thee!” | |
| “Olivia, lost Olivia!”—what else could the sad song be?— | |
| “Weep and mourn, she will not return,—she cannot return to thee!” | |
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