The boats bound in across the bar, <br />Seen in fair colors from afar, <br />Grown to dun colors strong and near; <br />Their very shadows seem to fear <br />The shadows of a week of harms, <br />The memories of a week's alarms, <br />And quiver like a happy sigh <br />As ship and shadow, drifting by, <br />Glide o'er the harbor's peaceful face, <br />Each to its Sabbath resting-place. <br /> <br /> <br />And some like weary children come, <br />With sobbing sails, half sick for home; <br />And some, like lovers' thoughts, to meet <br />The veiléd shore, spring daring, sweet; <br />And some reluctant, in the shade, <br />The great reef dropt, like souls afraid, <br />Creep sadly in. Against the shore <br />Ship unto shadow turneth more <br />And more. Ships, ocean, shadow, shore! <br />Part not, nor stir forevermore! <br /> <br /> <br />My thoughts sail inward silently, <br />My week-day thoughts, O God, to thee! <br />Cold fears, evasive like a star, <br />And hopes whose gayest colors are <br />Akin to shades of fear. Wild dreams <br />Whose unimprisoned sweetness seems <br />To-night a presence like a blame, <br />A solid presence like a shame: <br />And faint temptations with held breath <br />Make room for cares as dark as death, <br />Give place to broken aims, that sail <br />Dismasted from some heart-spent gale. <br /> <br /> <br />And those come leaping lightly in, <br />And these crawl laggard, as a sin <br />Turned shoreward-Godward-ever must. <br />My soul sits humble in the dust, <br />Content to think that in His grace <br />Each care shall find its Sabbath place, <br />Content to know that, less or more <br />No sin can harbor near the shore.<br /><br />Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/saturday-night-in-the-harbor/
