Aunt Pullet paused and unlocked a door which opened on something still more solemn than the passage,—a darkened room, in which the outer light, entering feebly, showed what looked like the corpses of furniture in white shrouds.
And the talk, the wonderful talk flowed on—or was it speech entirely, or did it pass at times into song—chanty of the sailors weighing the dripping anchor, sonorous hum of the shrouds in a tearing North-Easter, ballad of the fisherman hauling his nets at sundown against an apricot sky, chords of guitar and mandoline from gondola or caique?
And I live on, but in grief and self-contempt, ,,' Left here without the light I loved so much, , In a great tempest and with shrouds unkempt ,.
These last I broke through with a sudden jerk, and then regained the deck by the starboard shrouds.
Quick as thought, I sprang into the mizzen shrouds, rattled up hand over hand, and did not draw a breath till I was seated on the cross-trees.
And I live on, but in grief and self-contempt, ,,' Left here without the light I loved so much, , In a great tempest and with shrouds unkempt ,.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh Every winter, When the great sun has turned his face away, The earth goes down into a vale of grief, And fasts, and weeps, and shrouds herself in sables, Leaving her wedding-garlands to decay-- Then leaps in spring to his returning kisses.
