I can scarce discern the meeting
Of the shore and stream retreating,
So remote;
For the laggard river, dozing,
Only wakes from its reposing
Where I float.
Where the river mists are rising,
All the foliage baptizing
With their spray;
There the sun gleams far and faintly,
With a shadow soft and saintly,
In its ray.
And the perfume of some burning
Far-off brushwood, ever turning
To exhale
All its smoky fragrance dying,
In the arms of evening lying,
Where I sail.
My canoe is growing lazy,
In the atmosphere so hazy,
While I dream;
Half in slumber I am guiding,
Eastward indistinctly gliding
Down the stream.
NOCTURNE
Night of Mid-June, in heavy vapours dying,
Like priestly hands thy holy touch is lying
Upon the world’s wide brow;
God-like and grand all nature is commanding
The “peace that passes human understanding;”
I, also, feel it now.
What matters it to-night, if one life treasure
I covet, is not mine! Am I to measure
The gifts of Heaven’s decree
By my desires? O! life for ever longing
For some far gift, where many gifts are thronging,
God wills, it may not be.
Am I to learn that longing, lifted higher,
Perhaps will catch the gleam of sacred fire
That shows my cross is gold?
That underneath this cross—however lowly,
A jewel rests, white, beautiful and holy,
Whose worth can not be told.
Like to a scene I watched one day in wonder:—
city, great and powerful, lay under
A sky of grey and gold;
The sun outbreaking in his farewell hour,
Was scattering afar a yellow shower
Of light, that aureoled