The Salt Flats

Here clove the keels of centuries ago
     Where now unvisited the flats lie bare.
     Here seethed the sweep of journeying waters, where
   No more the tumbling floods of Fundy flow,
   And only in the samphire pipes creep slow
     The salty currents of the sap. The air
     Hums desolately with wings that seaward fare,
   Over the lonely reaches beating low.
   The wastes of hard and meagre weeds are thronged
  With murmurs of a past that time has wronged;
    And ghosts of many an ancient memory
  Dwell by the brackish pools and ditches blind,
  In these low-lying pastures of the wind,
    These marshes pale and meadows by the sea.