The White Cliffs by Alice Duer Miller

My father wrote me a letter-- My father, scholarly, indolent, strong, Teaching Greek better Than high-school students repay-- Teaching Greek in the winter, but all summer long Sailing a yawl in Narragansett Bay; Happier perhaps when I was away, Free of an anxious daughter, He could sail blue water Day after day, Beyond Brenton Reef Lightship, and Beavertail, Past Cuttyhunk to catch a gale Off the Cape, while he thought of Hellas and Troy, Chanting with joy Greek choruses--those lines that he said Must be written some day on a stone at his head: "But who can know As the long years go That to live is happy, has found his heaven." My father, so far away-- I thought of him, in Devon, Anchoring in a blind fog in Boothbay.