The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar · Paul Laurence Dunbar

Iii

325 of 424 · 1 min of reading

The sea speaks to me of you

All the day long;

Still as I sit by its side

You are its song.

The sea sings to me of you

Loud on the reef;

Always it moans as it sings,

Voicing my grief.

IV

My dear love died last night;

Shall I clothe her in white?

My passionate love is dead,

Shall I robe her in red?

But nay, she was all untrue,

She shall not go drest in blue;

Still my desolate love was brave,

Unrobed let her go to her grave.

V

There are brilliant heights of sorrow

That only the few may know;

And the lesser woes of the world, like waves,

Break noiselessly, far below.

I hold for my own possessing,

A mount that is lone and still--

The great high place of a hopeless grief,

And I call it my "Heart-break Hill."

And once on a winter's midnight

I found its highest crown,

And there in the gloom, my soul and I,

Weeping, we sat us down.

But now when I seek that summit

We are two ghosts that go;

Only two shades of a thing that died,

Once in the long ago.

So I sit me down in the silence,

And say to my soul, "Be still,"

So the world may not know we died that night,

From weeping on "Heart-break Hill."

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End of part 325 of 424