All that's past and the solitudinous sea

Apropos nothing in particular, these lines today from poems by Walter de la Mare, seem worth sharing:

Wonderful lovely there she sat,
Singing the night away,
All in the solitudinous sea
Of that there lonely bay
- Sam

We wake and whisper awhile,
But, the day gone by,
Silence and sleep like fields
of amaranth lie.
- All that's past

And so the days go by, 'the silence surging softly backward'....

Note: The phrase "the silence surged softly backward" ends de la Mare's famous poem, The Listeners, which apparently "might have been in F Scott Fitzgerald's mind when he composed the final, mysterious sentence of The Great Gatsby: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.""

Amongst the literary minded, the first sentence of books is often discussed but after reading that I should say there should be lists of last sentences of books too. Some have attempted to compile such a list. The above sentence from The Great Gatsby would certainly be on the top of any such list I would compile! What an beautiful sentence to end! Makes me want to go out and read the book NOW and see how we get there! I had started reading the book some years back but never got beyond a couple pages - not because the book was tedious to read but because I lacked the time and the patience. Just was not the right time, if I remember right. Some day, before I die, I'll get around to reading all the books I should have read!