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Home  »  The World’s Best Poetry  »  To All in Haven

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

Poems of Sentiment: VI. Labor and Rest

To All in Haven

Philip Bourke Marston (1850–1887)

ALL ye who have gained the haven of safe days,

And rest at ease, your wanderings being done,

Except the last, inevitable one,

Be well content, I say, and hear men’s praise:

Yet in the quiet of your sheltered bays,—

Bland waters shining in an equal sun,—

Forget not that the awful storm-tides run

In far, unsheltered, and tempestuous ways:

Remember near what rocks, and through what shoals,

Worn, desperate mariners strain with all their might:

They may not come to your sweet restful goals,

Your waters placid in the level light:—

Their graves wait in that sea no moon controls,

That is in dreadful fellowship with Night.