I walked beside the evening sea,
And dreamed a dream that could not be;
The waves that plunged along the shore
Said only—“Dreamer, dream no more!”
But still the legions charged the beach;
Loud rang their battle-cry, like speech;
But changed was the imperial strain:
It murmured—“Dreamer, dream again!”
I homeward turned from out...
I stand upon the summit of my life:
Behind, the camp, the court, the field, the grove,
The battle and the burden; vast, afar,
Beyond these weary ways, Behold! the Sea!
The sea o’erswept by clouds and winds and wings,
By thoughts and wishes manifold, whose breath
Is freshness and whose mighty pulse is peace.
Palter no question of the...
Long has the summer sunlight shone
On the fair form, the quaint costume;
Yet, nameless still, she sits, unknown,
A lady in her youthful bloom.
Fairer for this! no shadows cast
Their blight upon her perfect lot,
Whate’er her future or her past
In this bright moment matters not.
No record of her high descent
...
Why, death, what dost thou here,
This time o’ year?
Peach-blow and apple-blossom;
Clouds, white as my love’s bosom;
Warm wind o’ the west
Cradling the robin’s nest;
Young meadows hasting their green laps to fill
With golden dandelion and daffodil:
These are fit sights for spring;
But, oh, thou hateful thing...
Tell me, wide wandering soul, in all thy quest
Sipping or draining deep from crystal rim
Where pleasure sparkled, when did over brim
That draught its goblet with the fullest zest?
Of all thy better bliss what deemst thou best?
Then thus my soul made answer. Ecstasy
Comes once, like birth, like death, and once have I
Been, oh! so madly...
I saw her scan her sacred scroll,
I saw her read her record roll
Of men who wrought to win the right,
Of men who fought and died in fight;—
When now, a hundred years by-gone
The day she welcomed Washington,
She showed to him her boys and men,
And told him of their duty then.
“Here are the beardless boys I sent,
And the...
One night I lay asleep in Africa,
In a closed garden by the city gate;
A desert horseman, furious and late,
Came wildly thundering at the massive bar,
“Open in Allah’s name! Wake, Mustapha!
Slain is the Sultan,—treason, war, and hate
Rage from Fez to Tetuan! Open straight.”
The watchman heard as thunder from afar:
“Go to! In peace...
When youth was lord of my unchallenged fate,
And time seemed but the vassal of my will,
I entertainëd certain guests of state—
The great of older days, who, faithful still,
Have kept with me the pact my youth had made.
And I remember how one galleon rare
From the far distance of a time long dead
Came on the wings of a fair-fortuned air...
I saw thy beauty in its high estate
Of perfect empire, where at set of sun
In the cool twilight of thy lucent leaves
The dewy freshness told that day was done.
Hast thou no gift beyond thine ivory cone’s
Surpassing loveliness? Art thou not near—
More near than we—to nature’s silentness;
Is it not voiceful to thy finer ear?
Death ’s but one more to-morrow. Thou art gray
With many a death of many a yesterday.
O yearning heart that lacked the athlete’s force
And, stumbling, fell upon the beaten course,
And looked, and saw with ever glazing eyes
Some lower soul that seemed to win the prize!
Lo, Death, the just, who comes to all alike,
Life’s sorry scales of...
