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Songs
of the Common Day, and Ave!
An
Ode for the Shelley Centenary
by
Charles G.D. Roberts
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THE
SALT FLATS
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HERE
clove the keels of centuries ago
Where now unvisited
the flats lie bare.
Here seethed the sweep
of journeying waters, where
No more the tumbling floods of Fundy flow,
And only in the samphire pipes creep slow
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The salty currents
of the sap. The air
Hums desolately
with wings that seaward fare,
Over the lonely reaches beating low.
The
wastes of hard and meagre weeds are thronged
With murmurs of a past that time has wronged;
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And
ghosts of many an ancient memory
Dwell by the brackish pools and ditches blind,
In these low-lying pastures of the wind,
These marshes pale
and meadows by the sea. |
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