I sit on the shore of the deep blue sea
As the tide comes rolling in,
And wonder, as roaming in sunlit dreams,
The cause of the breakers' din.
For each of the foam-crowned billows
Has a wonderful story to tell,
And the surge's mystical music
Seems wrought by a fairy spell.
I wander through memory's portals,
Through mansions dim and vast,
And gaze at the beautiful pictures
That hang in the halls of the past.
And dream-faces gather around me,
With voices soft and low,
To draw me back to the pleasures
Of the lands of long ago.
There are visions of beauty and splendour,
And a fame that I never can win--
Far out on the deep they are sailing--
My ships that will never come in.