FROM THE FARM ON THE HILL
TO A.P.S.
The night wind moves the gloom
In the shadowy basswood;
Mysteriously the leaves sway and sing;
So slow, so tender is the wind,
The slender elm-tree
Is hardly stirred.
The sky is veiled with clouds,
With diaphanous tissue;
Through their dissolving films
The stars shine,
But how infinitely removed;
How inaccessible!
In the distant city
Under the obscure towers
The lights of watchers gleam;
From the dim fields
At intervals in the silence
A cuckoo utters
A distorted cry;
Through the low woods,
Haunted with vain melancholy,
A whip-poor-will wanders,
Forcing his monotonous song.
All the ancient desire
Of the human spirit
Has returned upon me in this hour,
All the wild longing
That cannot be satisfied.
Break, O anguish of nature,
Into some glorious sound!
Let me touch the next circle of being,
For I have compassed this life.
AT SCARBORO’ BEACH
The wave is over the foaming reef
Leaping alive in the sun,
Seaward the opal sails are blown
Vanishing one by one.
’Tis leagues around the blue sea curve
To the sunny coast of Spain,
And the ships that sail so deftly out
May never come home again.