Read "Les Salettes" by Edith Wharton online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Let all my waning senses reach / To clasp again that secret beach, / Pine-roofed and rock-embrasured, turned / To where the winter sunset burned / Beyond a purpling dolphin-cape / On charmèd seas asleep. / Let every murmur, every shape, / Fanned by that breathing hour's delight, / Against the widening western deep / Hold back the hour, hold back the night.
For here, across the molten sea, / From golden islands lapped in gold, / Come all the shapes that used to be / Part of the sunset once to me, / And every breaker's emerald arch / Bears closer their ethereal march, / And flings its rose and lilac spray / To dress their brows with scattered day. / As trooping shoreward, one by one, / Swift in the pathway of the sun, / With lifted arms and eyes that greet, / The lost years hasten to my feet.