Classic Poem

A CROSS the peace of all the night's great healing,
Beneath the silence of the dark's hushed deep,
A phosphorescent, ghostly spirit stealing,
You softly slide, a sleep within a sleep.

You slip and shine by boughs that bend to kiss you,
You dream by curved banks of shimmering green;
And where you swerve the alien meadows miss you,
But happy are the banks you glide between.

You drift, a solace to the great woods under,
Wimpling wide in many a watery moon;
And when you sing, the hours, in soft-eyed wonder,
Lean, finger on lip, entranced by your tune.

Out by dim, hazy shores, in reedy shallows,
The drowsy cattle sun them in the heat;
And, far from woody slopes and ragged fallows,
A lazy wind goes loitering in the wheat.

You fill the summer with your magic, chanting
Your sleepy music out by field and fell;
And spirits elusive in your bosom haunting
Sleep like the genie in the Arabian well.

In low green capes, by country ways descending,
Where your tides wind by many a braided shore,
The great cool elms, the heaven and water blending,
Mirror their ghosts within thy shimmering floor.

By pebbly shoals whereon your tides are driven
In silvery surge and far-heard slumbrous song,
Your sleeping shores and the white hosts of heaven
Hearken your tender droppings all night long.

Where out along the dusk, all white-mist laden,
You cradle deep in wells of azure light, —
Like to the virgin dreams of some sweet maiden, —
In your glad breast the million stars of night.

Across your silver bars whereby you glisten,
Oblivious of the throes of earth's wild mart,
You leap and sing, and then you lie and listen,
As if to hear the throbbing of your heart.

Unfettered child of nature's mirth and gladness,
Sing, sing and drift by field and country way;
Fill earth and men with thy divine, sweet madness,
With glad contentment gird both night and day:

Till care and pain one troublous dream dissolving,
Across the splendor of thy misty bars;
We only know the glorious day revolving,
Night's majesty, and her eternal stars.