Classic Poem

Let all my waning senses reach
To clasp again that secret beach,
Pine-roofed and rock-embrasured, turned
To where the winter sunset burned
Beyond a purpling dolphin-cape
On charmed seas asleep
Let every murmur, every shape,
Fanned by that breathing hour's delight,
Against the widening western deep
Hold back the hour, hold back the night. . . .

For here, across the molten sea,
From golden islands lapped in gold,
Come all the shapes that used to be
Part of the sunset once to me,
And every breaker's emerald arch
Bears closer their ethereal march,
And flings its rose and lilac spray
To dress their brows with scattered day,
As trooping shoreward, one by one,
Swift in the pathway of the sun,
With lifted arms and eyes that greet,
The lost years hasten to my feet.

All is not pain, their eyes declare;
The shoreward ripples are their voice,
The sunset, streaming through their hair,
Coils round me in a fiery flood,
And all the sounds of that rich air
Are in the beating of my blood,
Crying: Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice!

Rejoice, because such skies are blue,
Each dawn, above a world so fair,
Because such glories still renew
To transient eyes the morning's hue,
Such buds on every fruit-tree smile,
Such perfumes blow on every gale,
Such constellated hangings veil
The outer emptiness awhile;
And these frail senses that were thine,
Because so frail, and worn so fine,
Are as a Venice glass, wherethrough
Life's last drop of evening wine
Shall like a draught of morning shine

The glories go; their footsteps fade
Into an all-including shade,
And isles and sea and clouds and coasts
Wane to an underworld of ghosts.
But as I grope with doubtful foot
By myrtle branch and lentisk root
Up the precipitous pine-dark way,
Through fringes of the perished day
Falters a star, the first alight,
And threaded on that tenuous ray
The age long promise reappears,
And life is Beauty, fringed with tears