Classic Poem

I

G ORSE-PLAINS that flower their gold into the streams
Beneath the opal blossoms of the sky;
Sea-floods that weave their blue and purple seams;
White sails that lift the billows as they fly:
Not these in their abounding rapture vie
With love's diviner dreams.

II

Those lovers tire not when the sun is pale;
No statelier awning than a bristled tree
With branches cedared by the salten gale,
Stretched back, as if with wings that cannot flee:
They linger, and the sun departs by sea;
He spreads his crimson sail.

III

They watch him as he piles his busy deck
With golden treasure; as his sail expands;
They see him sink; they gaze upon the wreck
Through the still twilight of the silvery sands.
One cloud is left to the deserted lands:
The blue-set moon's cold fleck.

IV

They linger though the pageant hath gone by,
The opal cloud is lit o'er sea and plain;
The moon is full of one day's memory,
And tells the tale of Nature o'er again,
Its glory mingled in the soul's refrain
Under that lover's sky.