Ventures Into Verse / Being various ballads, ballades, rondeaux, triolets, songs, quatrains, odes and roundels, all rescued from the potters' field of old files and here given decent burial

by H. L. Mencken

Long, glimmering ripples wander by

As if the stars where in the sea,

Instead of in the sky.

And they went forth in ships of war

Girt up in all foolhardiness,

To take their toll from out her store,

Beguiled and snared by her caress;

And we go forth in cargo ships

To wrest her treasures bloodlessly,

And buy the nectar from her lips,