(He speaks)
The fog broods on the city white and chill,
Its tiny needles stinging keen like hail;
Across the sea, beyond the barren hill,
Continually the fog horns shrill and wail.
A tree climbs like a ghost from out the gloom,
Groping for sunlight with bare, skeleton hands;
And underneath, the fires of death and doom
Within her eyes, a gray-faced woman stands.
O my belovéd! in this strange, north place
Rush back old days that are forever new!
These shrill fog horns and this poor, haggard face
Remind by contrast of the June and you.
“The Fog Horn” as it appears in Higginson’s The Voice of April-Land and Other Poems (1903).