With the Tide

by Edith Wharton

　　Is gone from me, I read that when the days

　　Of a man are counted, and his business done,

　　There comes up the shore at evening, with the tide,

　　To the place where he sits, a boat --

　　And in the boat, from the place where he sits, he sees,

　　Dim in the dusk, dim and yet so familiar,

　　The faces of his friends long dead; and knows

　　They come for him, brought in upon the tide,

　　To take him where men go at set of day.

　　Then rising, with his hands in theirs, he goes

　　Between them his last steps, that are the first

　　Of the new life -- and with the ebb they pass,

　　Their shaken sail grown small upon the moon.

　　Often I thought of this, and pictured me

　　How many a man who lives with throngs about him,

　　Yet straining through the twilight for that boat

　　Shall scarce make out one figure in the stern,

　　And that so faint its features shall perplex him

　　With doubtful memories -- and his heart hang back.

　　But others, rising as they see the sail

　　Increase upon the sunset, hasten down,

　　Hands out and eyes elated; for they see

　　Head over head, crowding from bow to stern,

　　Repeopling their long loneliness with smiles,

　　The faces of their friends; and such go forth

　　Content upon the ebb tide, with safe hearts.

　　But never

　　To worker summoned when his day was done

　　Did mounting tide bring in such freight of friends

　　As stole to you up the white wintry shingle

　　That night while they that watched you thought you slept.

　　Softly they came, and beached the boat, and gathered

　　In the still cove under the icy stars,

　　Your last-born, and the dear loves of your heart,

　　And all men that have loved right more than ease,

　　And honor above honors; all who gave

　　Free-handed of their best for other men,

　　And thought their giving taking: they who knew

　　Man's natural state is effort, up and up --

　　All these were there, so great a company

　　Perchance you marveled, wondering what great ship

　　Had brought that throng unnumbered to the cove

　　Where the boys used to beach their light canoe

　　After old happy picnics --

　　But these, your friends and children, to whose hands

　　Committed, in the silent night you rose

　　And took your last faint steps --

　　These led you down, O great American,

　　Down to the winter night and the white beach,

　　And there you saw that the huge hull that waited

　　Was not as are the boats of the other dead,

　　Frail craft for a brief passage; no, for this

　　Was first of a long line of towering transports,

　　Storm-worn and ocean-weary every one,

　　The ships you launched, the ships you manned, the ships

　　That now, returning from their sacred quest

　　With the thrice-sacred burden of their dead,

　　Lay waiting there to take you forth with them,

　　Out with the ebb tide, on some farther quest.