"Adrift and Anchored"

Adrift and Anchored

Our barques met, touching―and trembled and parted, 

Yours for the ocean and mine for the bay; 

Ay, yours to drift from the hour that it started, 

Mine to be anchored by night and by day. 

The storms arise, and the rain-clouds are flying 

Over my barque in the harbor at rest; 

But my poor heart, when the sea-gulls are crying, 

Flees to you tossed on the tempest’s mad breast. 

And oft―ah, me! ―when the lightning is flashing, 

Cleaving a pathway of flame o’er the sea, 

When winds are wild, and the thunder is crashing 

Out where your barque rolls, while calm is with me, 

I think I see, through the tears that are burning, 

You, as we drift ever farther apart. . . . 

You reach your arms―with your lonely heart turning 

Back to the deep-anchored peace of my heart. 

"Adrift and Anchored" as it appears in Ella Higginson's When the Birds Go North Again (1898).