For my touch would chill your pulses,
And my kiss make dim your eye,
And the horn will first be silent
In the hour that you shall die.

THE VOYAGERS,

O longer spread the sail!
No longer strain the oar!
For never yet has blown the gale
Will bring us nearer shore.

N

The swaying keel slides on,

The helm obeys the hand;

Fast we have sailed from dawn to dawn, Yet never reach the land.

Each morn we see its peaks,

Made beautiful with snow;

Each eve its vales and winding creeks,
That sleep in mist below.

At noon we mark the gleam

Of temples tall and fair;

At midnight watch its bonfires stream
In the auroral air.

And still the keel is swift,

And still the wind is free,

And still as far its mountains lift

Beyond the enchanted sea.

Yet vain is all return,

Though false the goal before;
The gale is ever dead astern,
The current sets to shore.

O shipmates, leave the ropes, -
And what though no one steers,
We sail no faster for our hopes,
No slower for our fears.

Howe'er the bark is blown,

Lie down and sleep awhile:
What profits toil, when chance alone
Can bring us to the isle?

MEMORY.

GIVE me the tongue of the silver sea,
Or the flute of the twilight wind,

For a tenderer music my heart would
find,

To sing of the sadness and sweetness of Memory!

Joy is a goblet that soon is drained;

It cracks in our heedless hands;

But the cup of Remembrance forever stands, Filled with libations the wormwood of tears has stained.

We lift it against the dying sun;

We drink till the eyes run o'er;

We drink till the heart will contain no more, And surfeited turns from the Lethe it has not won.

THE MARINERS.

HEY were born by the shore, by the

shore,

When the surf was loud and the sea-
gull cried;

They were rocked to the rhythm of its roar,
They were cradled in the arms of the tide.

Sporting on the fenceless sand,

Looking o'er the limitless blue,

Half on the water and half on the land,
Ruddily and lustily to manhood they grew.

How should they follow where the plough
Furrows at the heels of the lazy steers ?
How should they stand with a sickly brow,
Pent behind a counter, wasting golden years?

They turned to the Earth, but she frowns on her child;

They turned to the Sea, and he smiled as of old; Sweeter was the peril of the breakers white and

wild,

Sweeter than the land with its bondage and gold!

Now they walk on the rolling deck,

And they hang to the rocking shrouds,

When the lee-shore looms with a vision of wreck, And the scud is flung to the stooping clouds.

Shifting the changeless horizon ring,

Which the lands and islands in turn look o'er, They traverse the zones with a veering wing, From shore to sea, and from sea to shore.

They know the South and the North;

They know the East and the West; Shuttles of fortune, flung back and forth In the web of motion, the woof of rest.

They do not act with a studied grace,
They do not speak in delicate phrase,
But the candor of heaven is on their face,
And the freedom of ocean in all their ways.

They cannot fathom the subtle cheats,

The lying arts which the landsmen learn: Each looks in the eyes of the man he meets, And whoso trusts him, he trusts in turn.

Say that they curse, if you will,

That the tavern and harlot possess their gains: On the surface floats what they do of ill,

At the bottom the manhood remains.

When they slide from the gangway-plank below, Deep as the plummeted shroud may drag,

They hold it comfort enough, to know

The corpse is wrapped in their country's flag.

But whether they die on the sea or shore,

And lie under water, or sand, or sod,

Christ give them the rest that he keeps in store,

And anchor their souls in the harbors of God!

HYMN TO AIR.

I.

HE mightiest thou, among the Powers of Earth,

The viewless Agent of the unseen God, What immemorial era saw thy birth? What pathless fields of new Creation trod Thy noiseless feet? Where was thy dwelling-place In the blind realm of Chaos, ere the word Of Sovereign Order by the stars was heard, Or the young planet knew her Maker's face? No wrecks are hid in thine unfathomed sea; Thy crystal tablets no inscription bear; The awful Infinite is shrined in thee,

Immeasurable Air!

II.

Thou art the Soul wherein the Earth renews
The nobler life, that heals her primal scars;
Thine is the mantle of all-glorious hues,

Which makes her beautiful among the stars;
Thine is the essence that informs her frame
With manifold existence, thine the wing
From gulfs of outer darkness sheltering,
And from the Sun's uplifted sword of flame.
She sleeps in thy protection, lives in thee;
Thou mak'st the foreheads of her mountains
smile;

His heart to thine, the all-surrounding Sea

Spreads thy blue drapery o'er his cradled isle.