Classic Poem

The moonlight filled the waters and the strand;
The floating spires gleamed toward the starry land;
Pale Hero seemed upon her Sestian height
To stand with torch alight.

At anchor slept a heavy rounded keel
Whose moveless rudder made the senses wheel
To music dropping from the Antwerp bells
In fluctuating swells.

A distant sound blending with dripping oar,
I thought a voice, and then a voice no more,
Past the Armenian convent's solemn wall
Shot with swift rise and fall.

A stately barge moved on a stately river,
Bearing a queen from happy France forever
To Holyrood, the witness of her shame,
Her beauty and sad fame.

There stood two lovers over Spezzia's bay,
Silent, enamored of the watery way;
One must soon pass to meet the purple dark
Borne in yon treacherous bark.

Breathless I watch a noble vessel come
Tented with sail and happy as for home:
Forward she bounds, when swift the moonlit gleam
Disparts our shadowy dream.

I tread upon my native city's piers;
I see what hope, what loveliness are hers;
Her ships come sailing in unsullied light
From outer seas to-night.