The shadows of the ships
Rock on the crest
In the low blue lustre
Of the tardy and the soft inrolling tide.

A long brown bar at the dip of the sky
Puts an arm of sand in the span of salt.

The lucid and endless wrinkles
Draw in, lapse and withdraw.
Wavelets crumble and white spent bubbles
Wash on the floor of the beach.

Rocking on the crest
In the low blue lustre
Are the shadows of the ships.

If I were young as you, Sixteen,
And you were old as I,
I would not be as I have been,
You would not be so shy—
We should not watch with careless mien
The golden days go by,
If I were young as you, Sixteen,
And you were old as I.

The years of youth are yours, Sixteen;
Such years of old had I,
But time has set his seal between
Dark eyebrow and dark eye.
Sere grow the leaves that once were green,
The song turns to a sigh:
Ah! very young are you, Sixteen,
And very old am I.

There are, who darkling and alone,
Would wish the weary night were gone,
Though dawning morn should only show
The secret of their unknown woe:
Who pray for sharpest throbs of pain
To ease them of doubt's galling chain:
"Only disperse the cloud," they cry,
"And if our fate be death, give light and let us die."

Unwise I deem them, Lord, unmeet
To profit by Thy chastenings sweet,
For Thou wouldst have us linger still
Upon the verge of good or ill.
That on Thy guiding hand unseen
Our undivided hearts may lean,

Wish not, dear friends, my pain away -
Wish me a wise and thankful heart,
With GOD, in all my griefs, to stay,
Nor from His loved correction start.

The dearest offering He can crave
His portion in our souls to prove,
What is it to the gift He gave,
The only Son of His dear love?

But we, like vexed unquiet sprights,
Will still be hovering o'er the tomb,
Where buried lie our vain delights,
Nor sweetly take a sinner's doom.

In Life's long sickness evermore
Our thoughts are tossing to and fro:

This is the end of all my ways,
My wanderings on earth,
My gloomy and my golden days,
My madness and my mirth.
I've bought ten thousand blades of grass
To bed me down below,
And here I wait the days to pass
Until I go.

Until I bid good bye to friend,
To feast and fast goodbye,
And in a stint of soil the end
I seek of sun and sky.
My farings far on land and sea,
My trails of global girth
Sum up to this,--to cover me
Six feet of earth.

SIT down, sad soul, and count
The moments flying:
Come,—tell the sweet amount
That ’s lost by sighing!
How many smiles?—a score?
Then laugh, and count no more;
For day is dying.

Lie down, sad soul, and sleep,
And no more measure
The flight of Time, nor weep
The loss of leisure;
But here, by this lone stream,
Lie down with us, and dream
Of starry treasure.

We dream: do thou the same:
We love—for ever;
We laugh; yet few we shame,
The gentle, never.

NEAR to the silver Trent
   SIRENA dwelleth;
She to whom Nature lent
   All that excelleth;
By which the Muses late
   And the neat Graces
Have for their greater state
   Taken their places;
Twisting an anadem
   Wherewith to crown her,
As it belong'd to them
   Most to renown her.
   On thy bank,
   In a rank,
   Let thy swans sing her,
   And with their music

New delights to our desire
The singers of the past can yield.
I lift mine eyes to hill and field,
And see in them your yet dumb lyre,
poets unborn and unrevealed.

Singers to come, what thoughts will start
To song? What words of yours be sent
Through man's soul, and with earth be blent?
These words of nature and the heart
Await you like an instrument.

Who knows what musical flocks of words
Upon these pine-tree tops will light,
And crown these towers in circling flight,
And cross these seas like summer birds,

The tires on my bike are flat.
The sky is grouchy gray.
At least it sure feels like that
Since Hanna moved away.

Chocolate ice cream tastes like prunes.
December's come to stay.
They've taken back the Mays and Junes
Since Hanna moved away.

Flowers smell like halibut.
Velvet feels like hay.
Every handsome dog's a mutt
Since Hanna moved away.

Nothing's fun to laugh about.
Nothing's fun to play.
They call me, but I won't come out
Since Hanna moved away.

The sky-line melts from russet into blue,
Unbroken the horizon, saving where
A wreath of smoke curls up the far, thin air,
And points the distant lodges of the Sioux.

Etched where the lands and cloudlands touch and die
A solitary Indian tepee stands,
The only habitation of these lands,
That roll their magnitude from sky to sky.

The tent poles lift and loom in thin relief,
The upward floating smoke ascends between,
And near the open doorway, gaunt and lean,
And shadow-like, there stands an Indian Chief.