O the silence that came next, the patience and long aching! 
  They never said so much as “He was a dear loved son;”
Not the father to the mother moaned, that dreary stillness breaking: 
  “Ah! wherefore did he leave us so—­this, our only one.”

They sat within, as waiting, until the neighbors prayed them,
  At Cromer, by the sea-coast, ’twere peace and change to be;
And to Cromer, in their patience, or that urgency affrayed them,
  Or because the tidings tarried, they came, and took me.

It was three months and over since the dear lad had started: 
  On the green downs at Cromer I sat to see the view;
On an open space of herbage, where the ling and fern had parted,
  Betwixt the tall white lighthouse towers, the old and the new.

Below me lay the wide sea, the scarlet sun was stooping,
  And he dyed the waste water, as with a scarlet dye;
And he dyed the lighthouse towers; every bird with white wing swooping
  Took his colors, and the cliffs did, and the yawning sky.

Over grass came that strange flush, and over ling and heather,
  Over flocks of sheep and lambs, and over Cromer town;
And each filmy cloudlet crossing drifted like a scarlet feather
  Torn from the folded wings of clouds, while he settled down.

When I looked, I dared not sigh:—­In the light of God’s splendor,
  With His daily blue and gold, who am I? what am I? 
But that passion and outpouring seemed an awful sign and tender,
  Like the blood of the Redeemer, shown on earth and sky.

O for comfort, O the waste of a long doubt and trouble! 
  On that sultry August eve trouble had made me meek;
I was tired of my sorrow—­O so faint, for it was double
  In the weight of its oppression, that I could not speak!

And a little comfort grew, while the dimmed eyes were feeding,
  And the dull ears with murmur of water satisfied;
But a dream came slowly nigh me, all my thoughts and fancy leading
  Across the bounds of waking life to the other side.

And I dreamt that I looked out, to the waste waters turning,
  And saw the flakes of scarlet from wave to wave tossed on;
And the scarlet mix with azure, where a heap of gold lay burning
  On the clear remote sea reaches; for the sun was gone.

Then I thought a far-off shout dropped across the still water—­
  A question as I took it, for soon an answer came
From the tall white ruined lighthouse:  “If it be the old man’s daughter
  That we wot of,” ran the answer, “what then—­who’s to blame?”

I looked up at the lighthouse all roofless and storm-broken: 
  A great white bird sat on it, with neck stretched out to sea;
Unto somewhat which was sailing in a skiff the bird had spoken,
  And a trembling seized my spirit, for they talked of me.

I was the old man’s daughter, the bird went on to name him;
  “He loved to count the starlings as he sat in the sun;
Long ago he served with Nelson, and his story did not shame him: 
  Ay, the old man was a good man—­and his work was done.”