She wandered down to the rocky beach
On the first Monday in June,
She wore a shawl, and carried a wreath
And sat for the afternoon,
She’d wait til the sun was sinking low
And shadows moved in the caves,
Then stride out into the rising tide
And cast her wreath on the waves.

She didn’t flinch if the waves were high
Or the storm clouds brought her rain,
She gazed out past the horizon while
Her face was creased with pain,
When lightning flickered across the sky
She knew that the gods could see,
And wrung her hands with a terrible cry,
‘Will none of you pity me?’

‘Take me,’ she cried at the rising tide,
‘Take me,’ she groaned at the sky,
‘You’ve taken the only thing I loved
And not even told me why!’
She threw herself at the foam-fleck’d waves
Where the swell would rise and breach,
But ever the tide in its forward ride
Would cast her back on the beach.

She sheltered then in the echoing caves
That dotted the cliff face shore,
And tears had streamed from a source of grace
The gods had preserved once more,
She heard the echoes as waters lapped,
Or thundered in at the cave,
A voice that ever had held her rapt,
‘Be brave, my love, be brave!’

She shut her eyes and she reached on out
For the source of the voice’s charms,
And moaned for a distant memory
That had held her once in his arms,
But the sea was keeping his secrets now,
She could only guess, and pine,
She couldn’t know that he lay below
Near the coast of Palestine.

A stranger came on the woman there,
One of the gypsy folk,
Just as the lightning flickered once
And he wrapped her in his cloak.
He took her up to the top of the cliff
Where the unknown future lies,
As she turned aside to wave goodbye
There was lovelight in his eyes.

David Lewis Paget