Classic Poem

Thine are the inaudible harmonies that keep
The brooding breathings of the night's glad lute,
When in those pauses 'twixt her sleep and sleep
All holy tunes be mute.

All beauteous seasons thou dost guard and bless,
The tremulous dawn, hushed noon and cooling night,
Earth, air and ocean thy dim palaces
Filled with divine delight.

The fathomless wells of heaven's deeps are thine,
Thou watchest over night's infinitudes,
The starry vast, within whose chant divine
No dissonant chord intrudes.

Thine are those oceans, dim, untenanted,
The unprescient homes of pregnancies to be,
Filling the lonely realms of mighty dread
With formless majesty.

Thou keepest the dewy caverns of the night
About majestic risings of the moon,
When over the breathing woods her phosphor light
Rises to silvern noon.

Thou lovest those lonely avenues of light
In the sun-kindled woods at early morn,
Upon the rosy rim of fading night
And cloudy meadows shorn;

Filling the joyous airs with summer fraught,
And morning's slopes with dewy odors bland;
Here with glad Fancy and slow-winged Thought
Thou wanderest hand in hand.

Thou holdest those intervals of peace that dwell
About the caverned shores of ocean furled,
When the long midnight hush or noonday swell
Slumbers about the world.

But dearest of all thou lovest that pensive hour,
That holy hour about the fringe of eve,
When sunset dreams in lonely woods have power
Imaginings to weave; —

When all the sunset world seems ages old
In sad romance and achings of dead wrong.
And all the beauty of life is poignant gold
In the hermit thrush's song.

Then down the long, dim memories of old woods
Facing forever the far-westering sun,
I'd dream for aye through hallowed solitudes
Where magic echoes run: —

Seeking the majesty of peace wherein thou hidest,
Those golden rivers of being without alloy;
Knowing the infinite of dream is where thou bidest,
Thou and that calm joy.