Classic Poem

As shakes the canvass of a thousand ships,
Struck by a heavy land-breeze, far at sea —
Ruffle the thousand broad-sheets of the land,
Filled with the people's breath of potency

A thousand images the hour will take,
From him who strikes, who rules, who speaks, who sings;
Many within the hour their grave to make —
Many to live, far in the heart of things.

A dark-dyed spirit he who coins the time,
To virtue's wrong, in base disloyal lies —
Who makes the morning's breath, the evening's tide,
The utterer of his blighting forgeries.

How beautiful who scatters, wide and free,
The gold-bright seeds of loved and loving truth!
By whose perpetual hand, each day, supplied —
Leaps to new life the empire's heart of youth.

To know the instant and to speak it true,
Its passing lights of joy, its dark, sad cloud,
To fix upon the unnumbered gazers' view,
Is to thy ready hand's broad strength allowed.

There is an in-wrought life in every hour,
Fit to be chronicled at large and told —
'Tis thine to pluck to light its secret power,
And on the air its many-colored heart unfold.

The angel that in sand-dropped minutes lives,
Demands a message cautious as the ages —
Who stuns, with dusk-red words of hate, his ear,
That mighty power to boundless wrath enrages.

Hell not the quiet of a Chosen Land,
Thou grimy man over thine engine bending;
The spirit pent that breathes the life into its limbs,
Docile for love is tyrannous in rending.

Obey, Rhinoceros! an infant's hand,
Leviathan! obey the fisher mild and young,
Vexed Ocean! smile, for on thy broad-beat sand
The little curlew pipes his shrilly song.