 | Poems: Second Series |  |
161
SUNSET AND SEA.
The river flows down to the sunset:
The river flows down to the sea;
But just where the sunset is brightest,
The river has ended for me.
Where the earth and the heaven are mingled
In rapture of radiant rest,
And the breadth of the brimming waters
Lies lost in the burning west.
The river flows down to the sea;
But just where the sunset is brightest,
The river has ended for me.
Where the earth and the heaven are mingled
In rapture of radiant rest,
And the breadth of the brimming waters
Lies lost in the burning west.
Yet afar in the hidden distance,
Beyond the immortal light,
The stream with its weary windings
Must wander on through the night—
Must wander on till the daybreak
Dawns desolate and forlorn,
And the waters mirror only
The wan white clouds of morn.
Beyond the immortal light,
The stream with its weary windings
Must wander on through the night—
Must wander on till the daybreak
Dawns desolate and forlorn,
And the waters mirror only
The wan white clouds of morn.
And the stream of your days, my darling,
Flows down to one ardent hour,
When the sunlight of love descended
On earth in a golden shower:—
Golden as Hope in the heaven,
Stainless of doubts or fears;—
Ah! now it is red and burning
Through the mists of memory's tears.
Flows down to one ardent hour,
When the sunlight of love descended
On earth in a golden shower:—
162
Stainless of doubts or fears;—
Ah! now it is red and burning
Through the mists of memory's tears.
The river flowed out of the sunlight;
The river is flowing for aye:—
I know not if white mists haunt it:
I know not if clouds are grey.
For me it has stayed its waters
In the gates of the golden sky:
It died in the sun's embraces,
And it lived, and it cannot die.
The river is flowing for aye:—
I know not if white mists haunt it:
I know not if clouds are grey.
For me it has stayed its waters
In the gates of the golden sky:
It died in the sun's embraces,
And it lived, and it cannot die.
For life is a stream to the ocean
Of passionate inward peace,
And in each true moment of Heaven
The waves of our wandering cease.
Each pulse of joy is the throbbing
Of tides of the shoreless sea,
And there they are met together—
This life and the life to be.
Of passionate inward peace,
And in each true moment of Heaven
The waves of our wandering cease.
Each pulse of joy is the throbbing
Of tides of the shoreless sea,
And there they are met together—
This life and the life to be.
| Poems: Second Series | |