The Breezes

The breezes of the sea, Oft sighing would not be, For everywhere they had to go, ’Neath the soft green leaves, They would whisper still, and grieve, For the earth, the air, and the sky, Seemed to be whispering to each by and by.

Oh, not in a lonely land, Not in the desert sand, But in the river’s flow, By the boundless sea they blow, And tell of all the beauty of a glade, Or the solitude that the shadows made.

• George William Curtis