Classic Poem

The breeze inscribes with ring on ring
The grizzled oily seas of Spring;
Around the headland, gray and pale,
Comes, like a ghost, a gliding sail.

Through brooding tides I see her come
Where once I rowed, where once I swum;
Ah! then that weltering water's hue
Was rainbow-purple, peacock-blue.

She veers and fades; she dies away
In gulfs of universal gray;
And of my boyhood and its boast
She seems the melancholy ghost.