The collected poems of William Ellery Channing the younger, 1817-1901

Hear'st thou the sobbing breeze complain
How faint the sunbeams light the shore?—
Thy heart, more fixed than earth or main,
Henry! thy faithful heart is o'er.

Oh, weep not thou thus vast a soul,
Oh, do not mourn this lordly man,
As long as Walden's waters roll,
And Concord river fills a span.

For thoughtful minds in Henry's page
Large welcome find, and bless his verse,
Drawn from the poet's heritage,
From wells of right and nature's source.

Fountains of hope and faith! inspire
Most stricken hearts to lift this cross;
His perfect trust shall keep the fire,
His glorious peace disarm the loss!

II
WHITE POND

Gem of the wood and playmate of the sky,
How glad on thee we rest a weary eye,
When the late ploughman from the field goes home,
And leaves us free thy solitudes to roam!

918

Thy sand the naiad gracefully had pressed,
Thy proud majestic grove the nymph caressed,
Who with cold Dian roamed thy virgin shade,
And, clothed in chastity, the chase delayed,
To the close ambush hastening at high noon,
When the hot locust spins his Zendic rune.

Here might Apollo touch the soothing lyre,
As through the darkening pines the day's low fire
Sadly burns out; or Venus nigh delay
With young Adonis, while the moon's still ray
Mellows the fading foliage, as the sky
Throws her blue veil of twilight mystery.

No Greece to-day; no dryad haunts the road
Where sun-burned farmers their poor cattle goad;
The black crow caws above yon steadfast pine,
And soft Mitchella's odorous blooms entwine
These mossy rocks, where piteous catbirds scream,
And Redskins flicker through the white man's dream.
Who haunts thy wood-path?—ne'er in summer pressed
Save by the rabbit's foot; its winding best
Kept a sure secret, till the tracks, in snow
Dressed for their sleds, the lumbering woodmen plough.

How soft yon sunbeam paints the hoary trunk,
How fine the glimmering leaves to shadow sunk!
Then streams across our grassy road the line
Drawn firmly on the sward by the straight pine;
And curving swells in front our feet allure,
While far behind the curving swells endure;
Silent, if half pervaded by the hum
Of the contented cricket. Nature's sum
Is infinite devotion. Days nor time
She emulates,—nurse of a perfect prime.

919

Herself the spell, free to all hearts; the spring
Of multiplied contentment, if the ring
With which we're darkly bound.
The pleasant road
Winds as if Beauty here familiar trode;
Her touch the devious curve persuasive laid,
Her tranquil forethought each bright primrose stayed
In its right nook. And where the glorious sky
Shines in, and bathes the verdant canopy,
The prospect smiles delighted, while the day
Contemns the village street and white highway.

Creature all beauteous! In thy future state
Let beauteous Thought a just contrivance date;
Let altars glance along thy lonely shore,
Relumed; and on thy leafy forest floor
Tributes be strewn to some divinity
Of cheerful mien and rural sanctity.
Pilgrims might dancing troop their souls to heal;
Cordials, that now the shady coves conceal,
Reft from thy crystal shelves, we should behold,
And by their uses by thy charms controlled.

Naught save the sallow herdsboy tempts the shore,
His charge neglecting, while his feet explore
Thy shallow margins, when the August flame
Burns on thy edge and makes existence tame;
Naught save the blue king-fisher rattling past,
Or leaping fry that breaks his lengthened fast;
Naught save the falling hues when Autumn's sigh
Beguiles the maple to a sad reply;
Or some peculiar air a sapless leaf
Guides o'er thy ocean by its compass brief.

Save one, whom often here glad Nature found
Seated beneath yon thorn, or on the ground

920

Poring content, when frosty Autumn bore
Of wilding fruit to earth that bitter store;
And when the building winter spanned in ice
Thy trembling limbs, soft lake! then each device
Traced in white figures on thy seamed expanse
This child of problems caught in gleeful trance.
Oh, welcome he to thrush and various jay,
And echoing veery, period of the day!
To each clear hyla trilling the new spring,
And late gray goose buoyed on his icy wing;
Bold walnut-buds admire the gentle hand,
While the shy sassafras their rings expand
On his approach, and thy green forest wave,
White Pond! to him fraternal greetings gave.
The far white clouds that fringe the topmost pine
For his delight their fleecy folds decline;
The sunset worlds melted their ores for him,
And lightning touched his thought to seraphim.

Clear wave, thou wert not vainly made, I know,
Since this sweet man of Nature thee could owe
A genial hour, some hope that flies afar,
And revelations from thy guiding star.
Oh, may that muse, of purer ray, recount,
White Pond! thy glory; and, while anthems mount
In strains of splendor, rich as sky and air,
Thy praise, my Henry, might those verses share.
For He who made the lake made it for thee,
So good and great, so humble, yet so free;
And waves and woods we cannot fairly prove,
Like souls, descended from celestial Jove.

With thee he is associate. Hence I love
Thy gleams, White Pond! thy dark, familiar grove;

921

Thy deep green shadows, clefts of pasture ground;
Mayhap a distant bleat the single sound,
One distant cloud, the sailor of the sky,
One voice, to which my inmost thoughts reply.

III
A LAMENT

A wail for the dead and the dying!
They fall in the wind through the Gilead tree,
Off the sunset's gold, off hill and sea;
They fall on the grave where thou art lying,
Like a voice of woe, like a woman sighing,
Moaning her buried, her broken love,
Never more joy,—never on earth, never in heaven above!

Ah, me! was it for this I came here?
Christ! didst thou die that for this I might live?
An anguish, a grief like the heart o'er the bier,—
Grief that I cannot bury, nor against it can strive,—
Life-long to haunt me, while breath brings to-morrow,
Falling in spring and in winter, rain and sleet sorrow,
Prest from my fate that its future ne'er telleth,
Spring from the unknown that ever more welleth.

Fair, O my fields! soft, too, your hours!
Mother of Earth, thou art pleasant to see!
I walk o'er thy sands, and I bend o'er thy flowers.
There is nothing, O nothing, thou givest me,
Nothing, O nothing, I take from thee.
What are thy heavens, so blue and so fleeting?
Storm, if I reck not, no echo meeting
In this cold heart, that is dead to its beating,
Caring for nothing, parting or greeting!

922

IV
MORRICE LAKE

(Written for E. S. Hotham.)

On Morrice Lake I saw the heron flit
And the wild wood-duck from her summer perch
Scale painted by, trim in her plumes, all joy;
And the old mottled frog repeat his bass,
Song of our mother Earth, the child so dear.
There, in the stillness of the forest's night,
Naught but the interrupted sigh of the breeze,
Or the far panther's cry, that, o'er the lake,
Touched with its sudden irony and woke
The sleeping shore; and then I hear its crash,
Its deep alarm-gun on the speechless night,—
A falling tree, hymn of the centuries.

No sadness haunts the happy lover's mind,
On thy lone shores, thou anthem of the woods,
Singing her calm reflections; the tall pines,
The sleeping hill-side and the distant sky,
And thou! the sweetest figure in the scene,
Truest and best, the darling of my heart.

O Thou, the ruler of these forest shades,
And by thy inspiration who controll'st
The wild tornado in its narrow path,
And deck'st with fairy wavelets the small breeze,
That like some lover's sigh entreats the lake;
O Thou, who in the shelter of these groves
Build'st up the life of nature, as a truth
Taught to dim shepherds on their star-lit plains,
Outwatching midnight; who in these deep shades

923

Secur'st the bear and catamount a place,
Safe from the glare of the infernal gun,
And leav'st the finny race their pebbled home,
Domed with thy watery sunshine, as a mosque;
God of the solitudes! kind to each thing
That creeps or flies, or launches forth its webs,—
Lord! in thy mercies, Father! in thy heart,
Cherish thy wanderer in these sacred groves;
Thy spirit send as erst o'er Jordan's stream,
Spirit and love and mercy for his needs.
Console him with thy seasons as they pass,
And with an unspent joy attune his soul
To endless rapture. Be to him,—thyself
Beyond all sensual things that please the eye,
Locked in his inmost being; let no dread,
Nor storm with its wild splendors, nor the tomb,
Nor all that human hearts can sear or scar,
Or cold forgetfulness that withers hope,
Or base undoing of all human love,
Or those faint sneers that pride and riches cast
On unrewarded merit,—be, to him,
Save as the echo from uncounted depths
Of an unfathomable past, burying
All present griefs.
Be merciful, be kind!
Has he not striven, true and pure of heart,
Trusting in thee? Oh, falter not, my child!
Great store of recompense thy future holds,
Thy love's sweet councils and those faithful hearts
Never to be estranged, that know thy worth.

924

V
TEARS IN SPRING

The swallow is flying over,
But he will not come to me;
He flits, my daring rover,
From land to land, from sea to sea;
Where hot Bermuda's reef
Its barrier lifts to fortify the shore,
Above the surf's wild roar
He darts as swiftly o'er,—
But he who heard that cry of spring
Hears that no more, heeds not his wing.

How bright the skies that dally
Along day's cheerful arch,
And paint the sunset valley!
How redly buds the larch!
Blackbirds are singing,
Clear hylas ringing,
Over the meadow the frogs proclaim
The coming of Spring to boy and dame,
But not to me,—
Nor thee!

And golden crowfoot's shining near,
Spring everywhere that shoots 'tis clear,
A wail in the wind is all I hear;
A voice of woe for a lover's loss,
A motto for a travelling cross,—
And yet it is mean to mourn for thee,
In the form of bird or blossom or bee.

925

Cold are the sods of the valley to-day
Where thou art sleeping,
That took thee back to thy native clay;
Cold,—if above thee the grass is peeping
And the patient sunlight creeping,
While the bluebird sits on the locust-bough
Whose shadow is painted across thy brow,
And carols his welcome so sad and sweet
To the Spring that comes and kisses his feet.

VI
THE MILL BROOK

The cobwebs close are pencils of meal,
Painting the beams unsound,
And the bubbles varnish the glittering wheel
As it rumbles round and round.
Then the Brook began to talk
And the water found a tongue,
“We have danced a long dance,” said the gossip,
“A long way have we danced and sung.”

“Rocked in a cradle of sanded stone
Our waters wavered ages alone,
Then glittered at the spring
On whose banks the feather-ferns cling;
Down jagged ravines
We fled tortured,
And our wild eddies nurtured
Their black hemlock screens;
And o'er the soft meadows we rippled along,
And soothed their lone hours with a pensive song,—

926

Now at this mill we're plagued to stop,
To let our miller grind the crop.

“See the clumsy farmers come
With jolting wagons far from home;
We grind their grist,
It wearied a season to raise,
Weeks of sunlight and weeks of mist,
Days for the drudge and Holydays.
To me it fatal seems,
Thus to kill a splendid summer,
And cover a landscape of dreams
In the acre of work and not murmur.
I could lead them where berries grew,
Sweet flag-root and gentian blue,
And they will not come and laugh with me,
Where my water sings in its joyful glee;
Yet small the profit, and short-lived for them,
Blown from Fate's whistle like flecks of steam.

“The old mill counts a few short years,—
Ever my rushing water steers!
It glazed the starving Indian's red,
On despair or pumpkin fed,
And oceans of turtle notched ere he came,
Species consumptive to Latin and fame,
(Molluscous dear or orphan fry,
Sweet to Nature, I know not why).

“Thoughtful critics say that I
From yon mill-dam draw supply.—
I cap the scornful Alpine heads,
Amazons and seas have beds,
But I am their trust and lord.
Me ye quaff by bank and board,

927

Me ye pledge the iron-horse,
I float Lowells in my source.

“The farmers lug their bags and say,—
‘Neighbor, wilt thou grind the grist to-day?’
Grind it with his nervous thumbs!
Clap his aching shells behind it,
Crush it into crumbs!

“No! his dashboards from the wood
Hum the dark pine's solitude;
Fractious teeth are of the quarry
That I crumble in a hurry,—
Far-fetched duty is to me
To turn this old wheel carved of a tree.

“I like the maples on my side,
Dead leaves, the darting trout;
Laconic rocks (they sometime put me out)
And moon or stars that ramble with my tide;
The polished air, I think I could abide.

“This selfish race who prove me,
Who use, but do not love me!
Their undigested meal
Pays not my labor on the wheel.
I better like the sparrow
Who sips a drop at morn,
Than the men who vex my marrow,
To grind their cobs and corn.”

Then said I to my brook, “Thy manners mend!
Thou art a tax on earth for me to spend.”

One of the most labored pieces I ever wrote. But it was not helped by work. W. E. C.

928

VII
STILLRIVER, THE WINTER WALK

The busy city or the heated car,
The unthinking crowd, the depot's deafening jar,
These me befit not, but the snow-clad hill
From whose white steeps the rushing torrents fill
Their pebbly beds, and as I look content
At the red Farmhouse to the summit lent,
There,—underneath that hospitable elm,
The broad ancestral tree, that is the helm
To sheltered hearts,—not idly ask in vain,
Why was I born,—the heritage of pain?

The gliding trains desert the slippery road,
The weary drovers wade to their abode;
I hear the factory bell, the cheerful peal
That drags cheap toil from many a hurried meal.
How dazzling on the hill-side shines the crust,
A sheen of glory unprofaned by dust!
And where thy wave, Stillriver, glides along,
A stream of Helicon unknown in song,
The pensive rocks are wreathed in snow-drifts high
That glance through thy soft tones like witchery.

To Fancy we are sometimes company,
And Solitude's the friendliest face we see.
Some serious village slowly through I pace,
No form of all its life mine own to trace;
Where the cross mastiff growls with blood-shot eye,
And barks and growls and waits courageously;
Its peaceful mansions my desire allure

929

Not each to enter and its fate endure,—
But Fancy fills the window with its guest;
The laughing maid,—her swain who breaks the jest;
The solemn spinster staring at the fire,
Slow fumbling for his pipe, her solemn sire;
The loud-voiced parson, fat with holy cheer,
The butcher ruddy as the atmosphere;
The shop-boy loitering with his parcels dull,
The rosy school-girls of enchantment full.

Away from these the solitary farm
Has for the mind a strange domestic charm,
On some keen winter morning when the snow
Heaps roof and casement, lane and meadow through.
Yet in those walls how many a heart is beating,
What spells of joy, of sorrow, there are meeting!
One dreads the post, as much the next, delay,
Lest precious tidings perish on their way.
The graceful Julia sorrows to refuse
Her teacher's mandate, while the boy let loose
Drags out his sled to coast the tumbling hill,
Whence from the topmost height to the low rill,
Shot like an arrow from the Indian's bow,
Downward he bursts, life, limb, and all below
The maddening joy his dangerous impulse gives;
In age, how slow the crazy fact revives!

Afar I track the railroad's gradual bend,
I feel the distance, feel the silence lend
A far romantic charm to farmhouse still,
And spurn the road that plods the weary hill,—
When like an avalanche the thundering car
Whirls past, while bank and rail deplore the jar.
The wildly piercing whistle through my ear
Tells me I fright the anxious engineer;

930

I turn,—the distant train and hurrying bell
Of the far crossing and its dangers tell.
And yet upon the hill-side sleeps the farm,
Nor maid or man or boy to break the charm.

Delightful Girl! youth in that farmhouse old,
The tender darling in the tender fold,—
Thy promised hopes fulfilled as Nature sought,
With days and years, the income of thy thought;
Sweet and ne'er cloying, beautiful yet free,
Of truth the best, of utter constancy;
Thy cheek whose blush the mountain wind laid on,
Thy mouth whose lips were rosebuds in the sun;
Thy bending neck, the graces of thy form,
Where art could heighten, but ne'er spoil the charm;
Pride of the village school for thy pure word,
Thy pearls alone those glistening sounds afford;
Sure in devotion, guileless and content,
The old farmhouse is thy right element.
Constance! such maids as thou delight the eye,
In all the Nashua's vales that round me lie!

And thus thy brother was the man no less,—
Bred of the fields and with the wind's impress.
With hand as open as his heart was free,
Of strength half-fabled mixed with dignity.
Kind as a boy, he petted dog and hen,
Coaxed his slow steers, nor scared the crested wren.
And not far off the spicy farming sage,
Twisted with heat and cold, and cramped with age,
Who grunts at all the sunlight through the year
And springs from bed each morning with a cheer.
Of all his neighbors he can something tell,—
'Tis bad, whate'er, we know, and like it well!—

931

The bluebird's song he hears the first in spring,
Shoots the last goose bound South on freezing wing.

Ploughed and unploughed the fields look all the same,
White as the youth's first love or ancient's fame;
Alone the chopper's axe awakes the hills,
And echoing snap the ice-encumbered rills;
Deep in the snow he wields the shining tool,
Nor dreads the icy blast, himself as cool.
Seek not the parlor, nor the den of state
For heroes brave; make up thy estimate
From these tough bumpkins clad in country mail,
Free as their air and full without detail.

No gothic arch our shingle Pæstum boasts,—
Its pine cathedral is the style of posts,—
No crumbling abbey draws the tourist there
To trace through ivied windows pictures rare,
Nor the first village squire allows his name
From aught illustrious or debauched by fame.

That sponge profane who drains away the bar
Of yon poor inn extracts the mob's huzza;
Conscious of morals lofty as their own,
The glorious Democrat,—his life a loan.
And mark the preacher nodding o'er the creed,
With wooden text, his heart too soft to bleed.
The Æsculapius of this little State,
A typhus-sage, sugars his pills in fate,
Buries three patients to adorn his gig,
Buys foundered dobbins or consumptive pig;
His wealthy pets he kindly thins away,
Gets in their wills,—and ends them in a day.
Nor shall the strong schoolmaster be forgot,
With fatal eye, who boils the grammar-pot;

932

Blessed with large arms he deals contusions round,
While even himself his awful hits confound.

Pregnant the hour when at the tailor's store,
Some dusty Bob a mail bangs through the door.
Sleek with good living, virtuous as the Jews,
The village squires look wise, desire the news.
The paper come, one reads the falsehood there,
A trial lawyer, lank-jawed as despair.
Here, too, the small oblivious deacon sits,
Once gross with proverbs, now devoid of wits,
And still by courtesy he feebly moans,
Threadbare injunctions in more threadbare tones.
Sly yet demure, the eager babes crowd in,
Pretty as angels, ripe in pretty sin.
And the postmaster, suction-hose from birth,
The hardest and the tightest screw on earth;
His price as pungent as his hyson green,
His measure heavy on the scale of lean.

A truce to these aspersions, as I see
The winter's orb burn through yon leafless tree,
Where far beneath the track Stillriver runs,
And the vast hill-side makes a thousand suns.
This crystal air, this soothing orange sky,
Possess our lives with their rich sorcery.
We thankful muse on that superior Power
That with his splendor loads the sunset hour,
And by the glimmering streams and solemn woods
In glory walks and charms our solitudes.

O'er the far intervale that dimly lies
In snowy regions placid as the skies,
Some northern breeze awakes the sleeping field,
And like enchanted smoke the great drifts yield

933

Their snowy curtains to the restless air;
Then build again for architect's despair
The alabaster cornice or smooth scroll
That the next moment in new forms unroll.

From Groton Junction (now Ayer) to Lancaster along the railroad.

VIII
TRURO

I

Ten steps it lies from off the sea,
Whose angry breakers score the sand,
A valley of the sleeping land,
Where chirps the cricket quietly.

The aster's bloom, the copses' green,
Grow darker in the softened sun,
And silent here day's course is run,
A sheltered spot that smiles serene.

It reaches far from shore to shore,
Nor house in sight, nor ship or wave,
A silent valley sweet and grave,
A refuge from the sea's wild roar.

Nor gaze from yonder gravelly height,—
Beneath, the crashing billows beat,
The rolling surge of tempests meet
The breakers in their awful might.—

And inland birds soft warble here,
Where golden-rods and yarrow shine,
And cattle pasture—sparest kine!
A rural place for homestead dear.

934

Go not then, traveller, nigh the shore!
In this soft valley muse content,
Nor brave the cruel element,
That thunders at the valley's door.

And bless the little human dell,
The sheltered copsewood snug and warm,—
Retreat from yon funereal form,
Nor tempt the booming surges' knell.

II
THE OLD WRECKER

He muses slow along the shore,
A stooping form, his wrinkled face
Bronzed dark with storm, no softer grace
Of hope; old, even to the core.

He heeds not ocean's wild lament,
No breaking seas that sight appall,—
The storms he likes, and as they fall
His gaze grows eager, seaward bent.

He grasps at all, e'en scraps of twine,
None is too small, and if some ship
Her bones beneath the breakers dip,
He loiters on his sandy line.

Lonely as ocean is his mien,
He sorrows not, nor questions fate,
Unsought, is never desolate,
Nor feels his lot, nor shifts the scene.

Weary he drags the sinking beach,
Undaunted by the cruel strife,

935

Alive, yet not the thing of life,
A shipwrecked ghost that haunts the reach.

He breathes the spoil of wreck and sea,
No longer to himself belongs,
Always within his ear thy songs,
Unresting Ocean! bound yet free.

In hut and garden all the same,
Cheerless and slow, beneath content,
The miser of an element
Without a heart,—that none can claim.

Born for thy friend, O sullen wave,
Clasping the earth where none may stand!
He clutches with a trembling hand
The headstones from the sailor's grave.

III
OPEN OCEAN

Unceasing roll the deep green waves,
And crash their cannon down the sand,
The tyrants of the patient land,
Where mariners hope not for graves.

The purple kelp waves to and fro,
The white gulls, curving, scream along;
They fear not thy funereal song,
Nor the long surf that combs to snow.

The hurrying foam deserts the sand,
Afar the low clouds sadly hang,
But the high sea with sullen clang,
Still rages for the silent land.

936

No human hope or love hast thou,
Unfeeling Ocean! in thy might,
Away—I fly the awful sight,
The working of that moody brow.

The placid sun of autumn shines,—
The hurrying knell marks no decline,
The rush of waves, the war of brine,
Force all, and grandeur, in thy lines.

Could the lone sand-bird once enjoy
Some mossy dell, some rippling brooks,
The fruitful scent of orchard nooks,
The loved retreat of maid or boy!

No, no; the curling billows green,
The cruel surf, the drifting sand,
No flowers or grassy meadow-land,
No kiss of seasons linked between.

The mighty roar, the burdened soul,
The war of waters more and more,
The waves, with crested foam-wreaths hoar,
Rolling to-day, and on to roll.

IV
WINDMILL ON THE COAST

With wreck of ships, and drifting plank,
Uncouth and cumbrous, wert thou built,
Spoil of the sea's unfathomed guilt,
Whose dark revenges thou hast drank.

And loads thy sail the lonely wind,
That wafts the sailor o'er the deep,

937

Compels thy rushing arms to sweep,
And earth's dull harvesting to grind.

Here strides the fisher lass and brings
Her heavy sack, while creatures small,
Loaded with bag and pail, recall
The youthful joy that works in things.

The winds grind out the bread of life,
The ceaseless breeze torments the stone,
The mill yet hears the ocean's moan,
Her beams the refuse of that strife.

V
ETERNAL SEA

I hear the distant tolling bell,
The echo of the breathless sea;
Bound in a human sympathy
Those sullen strokes no tidings tell.

The spotted sea-bird skims along,
And fisher-boats dash proudly by;
I hear alone that savage cry,
That endless and unfeeling song.

Within thee beats no answering heart,
Cold and deceitful to my race,
The skies alone adorn with grace
Thy freezing waves, or touch with art.

And man must fade, but thou shalt roll
Deserted, vast, and yet more grand;
While thy cold surges beat the strand,
Thy funeral bells ne'er cease to toll.

938

VI
MICHEL ANGELO—AN INCIDENT

Hard by the shore the cottage stands,
A desert spot, a fisher's house,
There could a hermit keep carouse
On turnip-sprouts from barren sands.

No church or statue greets the view,
Not Pisa's tower or Rome's high wall;
And connoisseurs may vainly call
For Berghem's goat, or Breughel's blue.

Yet meets the eye along a shed,
Blazing with golden splendors rare,
A name to many souls like prayer,
Robbed from a hero of the dead.

It glittered far, the splendid name,
Thy letters, Michel Angelo,—
In this lone spot none e'er can know
The thrills of joy that o'er me came.

Some bark that slid along the main
Dropped off her headboard, and the sea
Plunging it landwards, in the lee
Of these high cliffs it took the lane.

But ne'er that famous Florentine
Had dreamed of such a fate as this,
Where tolling seas his name may kiss,
And curls the lonely sand-strewn brine.

These fearless waves, this mighty sea,
Old Michel, bravely bear thy name!
Like thee, no rules can render tame,
Fatal and grand and sure like thee.

939

VII
OLD OCEAN

Of what thou dost, I think, not art,
Thy sparkling air and matchless force,
Untouched in thy own wild resource,
The tide of a superior heart.

No human love beats warm below,
Great monarch of the weltering waste!
The fisher-boats make sail and haste,
Thou art their savior and their foe.

Alone the breeze thy rival proves,
Smoothing o'er thee his graceful hand,
Lord of that empire over land,
He moves thy hatred and thy loves.

Yet thy unwearied plunging swell,
Still breaking, charms the sandy reach,
No dweller on the shifting beach,
No auditor of thy deep knell;—

The sunny wave, a soft caress;
The gleaming ebb, the parting day;
The waves like tender buds in May,
A fit retreat for blessedness.

And breathed a sigh like children's prayers,
Across thy light aerial blue,
That might have softened wretches too,
Until they dallied with these airs.

Was there no flitting to thy mood?
Was all this bliss and love to last?
No lighthouse by thy stormy past,
No graveyard in thy solitude!

University of Virginia Library

MEMORIAL VERSES

I TO HENRY

II WHITE POND

III A LAMENT

IV MORRICE LAKE

V TEARS IN SPRING

VI THE MILL BROOK

VII STILLRIVER, THE WINTER WALK

VIII TRURO

I

II THE OLD WRECKER

III OPEN OCEAN

IV WINDMILL ON THE COAST

V ETERNAL SEA

VI MICHEL ANGELO—AN INCIDENT

VII OLD OCEAN

I
TO HENRY