Over the gray leagues of ocean

The infinite yearneth alone; The forests with wandering emotion The thing they know not intone; Creation arose but to see it, A million lamps in the blue; But a lover, he shall be it, If one sweet maid is true.

O, INEXPRESSIBLE AS SWEET

O, INEXPRESSIBLE as sweet,
Love takes my voice away;

I cannot tell thee when we meet
What most I long to say.

But hadst thou hearing in thy heart

To know what beats in mine,

Then shouldst thou walk, where'er thou art, In melodies divine.

So warbling birds lift higher notes
Than to our ears belong;

The music fills their throbbing throats,
But silence steals the song.

THE ROSE OF STARS

WHEN Love, our great Immortal,
Put on mortality,
And down from Eden's portal
Brought this sweet life to be,
At the sublime archangel

He laughed with veiled eyes,
For he bore within his bosom
The seed of Paradise.

He hid it in his bosom,

And there such warmth it found, It brake in bud and blossom,

And the rose fell on the ground; As the green light on the prairie,

As the red light on the sea, Through fragrant belts of summer Came this sweet life to be.

And the grave archangel seeing

Spread his mighty wings for flight, But the glow hung round him fleeing Like the rose of an Arctic night; And sadly moving heavenward

By Venus and by Mars, He heard the joyful planets

Hail Earth, the Rose of Stars.

DIVINE AWE

To tremble, when I touch her hands,
With awe that no man understands;
To feel soft reverence arise
When, lover-sweet, I meet her eyes;
To see her beauty grow and shine
When most I feel this awe divine, ·
Whate'er befall me, this is mine;
And where about the room she moves,
My spirit follows her, and loves.

HOMEWARD BOUND

I

INTO the west of the waters on the living ocean's foam,

Into the west of the sunset where the young adventurers roam,

Into the west of the shining star, I am sailing, sailing home;

Home from the lonely cities, time's wreck, and the naked woe,

Home through the clean great waters where freemen's pennants blow,

Home to the land men dream of, where all the nations go;

'Tis home but to be on the waters, 't is home already here,

Through the weird red-billowing sunset into the west to steer,

To fall asleep in the rocking dark with home a day more near.

II

By morning light the ship holds on, alive with happy freight,

A thousand hearts with one still joy, and with one hope elate,

To reach the land that mothered them and sweetly guides their fate;

Whether the purple furrow heaps the bows with dazzling spray,

Or buried in green-based masses they dip the storm-swept day,

Or the white fog ribbons o'er them, the strong ship holds her way; And when another day is done, by the star of love we steer

To the land of all that we love best and all that we hold dear;

We are sailing westward, homeward; our western home is near.

THE CHILD

IT was only the clinging touch
Of a child's hand in the street,
But it made the whole day sweet;
Caught, as he ran full-speed,

In my own stretched out to his need,
Caught, and saved from the fall,
As I held, for the moment's poise,
In my circling arms the whole boy's
Delicate slightness, warmed mould;
Mine, for an instant mine,

The sweetest thing the heart can divine,

More precious than fame or gold,
The crown of many joys,

Lay in my breast, all mine.

I was nothing to him;

He neither looked up nor spoke; I never saw his eyes;

He was gone ere my mind awoke From the action's quick surprise With vision blurred and dim.

You say
I ask too much:

It was only the clinging touch
Of a child in a city street;

It hath made the whole day sweet.

O, STRUCK BENEATH THE LAUREL O, STRUCK beneath the laurel, where the singing fountains are,

I saw from heaven falling the star of love afar;

O, slain in Eden's bower nigh the bourn where lovers rest,

I fell upon the arrow that was buried in my breast;

Farewell the noble labor, farewell the silent pain,

Farewell the perfect honor of the long years lived in vain;

I lie upon the moorland where the wood and pasture meet,

And the cords that no man breaketh are bound about my feet.

SO SLOW TO DIE

THE rainbow on the ocean
A moment bright,
The nightingale's devotion
That dies on night,

I WILL rise, I will go from the places that are dark with passion and pain, From the sorrow-changed woodlands and a thousand memories slain.

O light gone out in darkness on the cliff I seek no more

Where she I worshipped met me in her girlhood at the door!

O, bright though years how many! farewell, sweet guiding star The wild wind blows me seaward over the harbor-bar!

Better thy waste, gray Ocean, the homeless, heaving plain,

Than to choke the fount of life and the flower of honor stain !

I will seek thy blessed shelter, deep bosom of sun and storm,

From the fever and fret of the earth and the things that debase and deform; For I am thine; from of old thou didst lay me, a child, at rest

O DESTINED Land, unto thy citadel, What founding fates even now doth peace compel,

That through the world thy name is sweet to tell!

O throned Freedom, unto thee is brought Empire; nor falsehood nor blood-payment asked;

Who never through deceit thy ends hast sought,

Nor toiling millions for ambition tasked; Unlike the fools who build the throne

On fraud, and wrong, and woe;
For man at last will take his own,

Nor count the overthrow;
But far from these is set thy continent,

Nor fears the Revolution in man's rise; On laws that with the weal of all consent, And saving truths that make the people wise:

For thou art founded in the eternal fact That every man doth greaten with the

act

Of freedom; and doth strengthen with the weight

Of duty; and diviner moulds his fate, By sharp experience taught the thing he lacked,

God's pupil; thy large maxim framed, though late,

Who masters best himself best serves the State.

This wisdom is thy Corner: next the stone Of Bounty; thou hast given all; thy store, Free as the air, and broadcast as the light, Thou flingest; and the fair and gracious sight,

More rich, doth teach thy sons this happy lore:

That no man lives who takes not priceless gifts

Both of thy substance and thy laws, whereto He may not plead desert, but holds of

The awful scales and that war-hammered

beam

Which whoso thinks to break doth fondly dream,

Or Czars who tyrannize or mobs that rage; These are her charge, and heaven's eternal law.

She from old fountains doth new judgment draw.

Till, word by word, the ancient order

swerves

To the true course more nigh; in every age

A little she creates, but more preserves. Hope stands the last, a mighty prop of fate. These thy foundations are, O firm-set State!

ON A PORTRAIT OF COLUMBUS

Was this his face, and these the finding eyes

That plucked a new world from the rolling seas?

Who, serving Christ, whom most he sought to please,

Willed his one thought until he saw arise
Man's other home and earthly paradise -
His early vision, when with stalwart knees
He pushed the boat from his young olive-
trees,

And sailed to wrest the secret of the skies?
He on the waters dared to set his feet,
And through believing planted earth's last

race.

What faith in man must in our new world beat,

Thinking how once he saw before his face
The west and all the host of stars retreat
Into the silent infinite of space!
1892

AMERICA TO ENGLAND

MOTHER of nations, of them eldest we, Well is it found, and happy for the state, When that which makes men proud first makest them great,

And such our fortune is who sprang from thee,

And brought to this new land from over

sea

The faith that can with every household mate,

And freedom whereof law is magistrate, And thoughts that make men brave, and leave them free.

O Mother of our faith, our law, our lore, What shall we answer thee if thou shouldst ask

How this fair birthright doth in us increase ? There is no home but Christ is at the door; Freely our toiling millions choose life's task;

Justice we love, and next to justice peace.

AT GIBRALTAR

I

ENGLAND, I stand on thy imperial ground,
Not all a stranger; as thy bugles blow,
I feel within my blood old battles flow,
The blood whose ancient founts in thee are
found.

Still surging dark against the Christian bound

Wide Islam presses; well its peoples know Thy heights that watch them wandering below;

I think how Lucknow heard their gathering sound.

I turn, and meet the cruel, turbaned face. England, 'tis sweet to be so much thy son! I feel the conqueror in my blood and race; Last night Trafalgar awed me, and to-day Gibraltar wakened; hark, thy evening gun Startles the desert over Africa!

II

Thou art the rock of empire, set mid-seas Between the East and West, that God has built;

Advance thy Roman borders where thou wilt,

While run thy armies true with his decrees; Law, justice, liberty,- great gifts are these:

Watch that they spread where English blood is spilt,

Lest, mixed and sullied with his country's guilt,

The soldier's life-stream flow, and Heaven displease!

Two swords there are: one naked, apt to smite,

Thy blade of war; and, battle-storied, one Rejoices in the sheath, and hides from light. American I am; would wars were done!

Now westward, look, my country bids good-night,

Peace to the world from ports without a gun!

LOVE'S ROSARY

SWEET names, the rosary of my evening prayer,

Told on my lips like kisses of good-night To friends who go a little from my sight, And some through distant years shine clear and fair!

So this dear burden that I daily bear Mighty God taketh, and doth loose me quite;

And soft I sink in slumbers pure and light

With thoughts of human love and heavenly

care;

But when I mark how into shadow slips My manhood's prime, and weep fast-passing friends,

And heaven's riches making poor my lips, And think how in the dust love's labor ends,

Then, where the cluster of my hearth-stone shone,

"Bid me not live," I sigh, "till all be gone."

SONG OF EROS, IN “AGATHON

WHEN love in the faint heart trembles,
And the eyes with tears are wet,
Oh, tell me what resembles
Thee, young Regret?
Violets with dewdrops drooping;
Lilies o'erfull of gold,
Roses in June rains stooping,
That weep for the cold,
Are like thee, young Regret.

Bloom, violets, lilies, and roses!
But what, young Desire,
Like thee, when love discloses
Thy heart of fire?

The wild swan unreturning,

The eagle alone with the sun,
The long-winged storm-gulls burning
Seaward when day is done,
Are like thee, young Desire.

So, when wild storms are past, and winds grow tame,

And the foiled tempest holds his hand,
The vessels cast safe anchor near the strand;
And sweet it seems a gentle sea to ride,
While lapping waters lave

The weary, battered side:

Ah, linger thus," the shipmen cry, "near land,

Nor tempt again the buffets of the wave!"
They will not heed the voice

That calls from far and chides their choice:
He must not dally with the shore
Who thinks on noble gain,

But bend him stoutly to the oar,
And seek the midmost main,

And wrest their treasure from the clasp of wave and hurricane.

IV

Ho! pilot of the roaring seas! No summer sailor thou;