Infusion
By George Sterling
Her name is like a sighing in the tree When the young winds of April sway the pine. Long mingled with shoreline and the sea Those irrecoverable ashes shine. She is strewn along a league of changing surf; Her dust is where the mighty breakers comb And glimmering sands go up to vernal turf Or granite walls are choral with the foam. The wild rose and the bracken may have caught A shadow of her beauty from the breath Of melancholy waters: is there aught That is not somehow lovelier with her death? She is made one with elemental things. Wherefore, if you would seek her noble grave, You shall not find it where the ivy clings Or chiseled marble tells what songs she gave. But you shall know that with the sea's turquoise She mingles, and the silver of the sands- In ocean-echoes find her startling voice, And in the foam the flashing of her hands. Is it not well? For in her heart we found The pure sea's bitterness and cruel power, And find new music in the lonelier sound Of waters broken at the sunset-hour.
The heading under this poem originally read, N.M.F. (Nora May French)