Works

Shipmate, leave the ghostly shadows,
Where thy boon companions throng!
We will put to sea together
Through the twilight with a song.

Leering closer, rank and girding,...

Here's to you, Arthur! You and I
Have seen a lot of stormy weather,
Since first we clinked cups on the sly
At school together.

The winds of fate have had their will...

Give me your last Aloha,
When I go out of sight,
Over the dark rim of the sea
Into the Polar night!

And all the Northland give you
Skoal for the voyage begun,...

There's a schooner out from Kingsport,
Through the morning's dazzle-gleam,
Snoring down the Bay of Fundy
With a norther on her beam.

How the tough wind springs to wrestle,...

"Lose and love" is love's first art;
So it was with thee and me,
For I first beheld thy heart
On the night I last saw thee.
Pine-woods and mysteries!
Sea-sands and sorrows!...

I was born for deep-sea faring;
I was bred to put to sea;
Stories of my father's daring
Filled me at my mother's knee.

I was sired among the surges;
I was cubbed beside the foam;...

Here's a health to thee, Roberts,
And here's a health to me;
And here's to all the pretty girls
From Denver to the sea!

Here's to mine and here's to thine!
Now's the time to clink it!...

There is no escape by the river,
There is no flight left by the fen;
We are compassed about by the shiver
Of the night of their marching men.
Give a cheer!
For our hearts shall not give way....

There paused to shut the door
A fellow called the Wind.
With mystery before,
And reticence behind,

A portal waits me too
In the glad house of spring,
One day I shall pass through...

You hearken, fellows? Turned aside
Into the road-house of the past!
The prince of vagabonds is gone
To house among his peers at last.

The stainless gallant gentleman,...

I like the old house tolerably well,
Where I must dwell
Like a familiar gnome;
And yet I never shall feel quite at home:
I love to roam.

Day after day I loiter and explore
From door to door;...

Softly, softly, Niccolo Amati!
What can put such fancies in your head?
There, go dream of your blue-skied Cremona,
While I ponder something you have said.

Something in that last low lovely cadence...

I.

Floating!
Floating--and all the stillness waits
And listens at the ivory gates,
Full of a dim uncertain presage
Of some strange, undelivered message.
There is no sound save from the bush...

The fervid breath of our flushed Southern May
Is sweet upon the city's throat and lips,
As a lover's whose tired arm slips
Listlessly over the shoulder of a queen.

Far away...

Oh, but life went gayly, gayly,
In the house of Idiedaily!

There were always throats to sing
Down the river-banks with spring,

When the stir of heart's desire...

Once I met a soncy maid,
Soncy maid, soncy maid,
Once I met a soncy maid
In the Wayland willows.

All her hair was goldy brown,
Goldy brown, goldy brown,
In the sun a single braid...

The play is Life; and this round earth,
The narrow stage whereon
We act before an audience
Of actors dead and gone.

There is a figure in the wings
That never goes away,...

Once in the Workshop, ages ago,
The clay was wet and the fire was low.

And He who was bent on fashioning man
Moulded a shape from a clod,
And put the loyal heart therein;...

O Moon, Mr. Moon,
When you comin' down?
Down on the hilltop,
Down in the glen,
Out in the clearin',
To play with little men?
Moon, Mr. Moon,
When you comin' down?

O Mr. Moon,...

Dear Lilac, how enchanting
To hear of you this way!
The Man who comes a-mouching
To visit me each day

Says you too have a lover
Far lovelier than I.
And from his rapt description,...