Classic Poem

I.

What silver, tremulous gleams sweep o'er the sea,
Making the air more glad for drops of light,
And severing in twain the moody plight
Wherein my soul lay, and in flashing glee
Garmenting the waves' lithesome witchery?
Not all undone the potence of the night
Sits in mine eyes, and through my languid sight
So rules the day, that subtly come and flee
Cloud-shadows 'twixt the sun and glowing earth;
But to the shore long grasses creep and laugh,
Upon the cliffs the green-clad trees make mirth;
I stand aloof, the summer joyance quaff,
And through my heart unwonted pleasures flow,
As through the land the river's sunrise glow.

II.

What thinkest thou? within the lonely glade
The dryad dwells and dreams the livelong day
How leaf by leaf her forest clothes the May
With gold-green gloom and sunbeam-haunted shade;
Upon the sky whose slender clouds have made
A web miraculous wherewith at play
The winds have shown their inmost fancies gay,
I read the splendid message which shall fade
No more from my deep heart or Nature's scene;
O soul of things attained and found at last,
The love that is the fountain and the source
Whence forests bring their periodic green,
Whence sunlit clouds upon the winds fly fast,
And passion gains its undiverted course!

III.

O Love that holdst in sweet embrace
All forms of life, nor basely clingst to one,
Or in that one seeing but the centred sun
Reflected, dost in clearest eyes but trace
The lineaments of that Universal Face
That was or ere the strife of sense begun,
O Love whose image is most deftly spun
Into the spirit of Life's chiefest grace,
And leadst all feet to Beauty's shrine eterne,
No longer lured on this or that strange way,
And in all loves loving but thee alone,
We cease the anguish of all those who yearn,
Being made part of thyself and finding day
Which but unto thy worshippers is known.