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Free Verse · Death & Loss

The Ocean Said to Me Once

by Stephen Crane · 1895

The ocean said to me once,

"Look!

Yonder on the shore

Is a woman, weeping.

I have watched her.

Go you and tell her this —

Her lover I have laid

In cool green hall.

There is wealth of golden sand

And pillars, coral-red;

Two white fish stand guard at his bier.

"Tell her this

And more —

That the king of the seas

Weeps too, old, helpless man.

The bustling fates

Heap his hands with corpses

Until he stands like a child

With a surplus of toys."

This poem is in the public domain.

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