As It Looked Then

In a sick shade of spruce, moss-webbed, rock-fed,

Where, long unfollowed by sagacious man,

A scrub that once had been a pathway ran

Blindly from nowhere and to nowhere led,

One might as well have been among the dead

As half way there alive; so I began

Like a malingering pioneer to plan

A vain return—with one last look ahead.

And it was then that like a spoken word

Where there was none to speak, insensibly

A flash of blue that might have been a bird

Grew soon to the calm wonder of the sea—

Calm as a quiet sky that looked to be

Arching a world where nothing had occurred.

E.A. Robinson