And the songs will never let me sleep.
I plead with them; but o'er the deep
They still will roll
On, and on, and on,
Their music never gone.
Ah! world-tired soul!
Just for a little while,
Just like a poor, tired child
Beneath its Mother's smile —
Only to fall asleep!
Silence! be mother to me!
But — No! No! No!
The waves will ebb and flow.
I wonder is it best
To never, never rest
Down on the shores of this strange Below?
Only a Dream
Only a Dream!
It floated thro'
The sky of a lonely sleep
As floats a gleam
Athwart the Blue
Of a golden clouded Deep.
Only a Dream!
I calmly slept.
Meseems I called a name;
I woke; and, waking, I think I wept
And called — and called the same.
Only a Dream!
Graves have no ears;
They give not back the dead;
They will not listen to the saddest tears
That ever may be shed.
Only a Dream!
Graves keep their own;
They have no hearts to hear;
But the loved will come
From their Heaven-Home
To smile on the sleeper's tear.
The Poet
The Poet is the loneliest man that lives;
Ah me! God makes him so —
The sea hath its ebb and flow,
He sings his songs — but yet he only gives
In the waves of the words of his art
Only the ~foam~ of his heart.
Its sea rolls on forever, evermore,
Beautiful, vast, and deep;
Only his ~shallowest~ thoughts touch the shore
Of Speech; his ~deepest~ sleep.
The foam that crests the wave is pure and white;
The ~foam~ is not the ~wave~;
The wave is not the sea — ~it rolls~ forever on;
The winding shores will crave
A kiss from ev'ry wavelet on the deep;
~Some come~; some always ~sleep~.