From the Past and Unavailing
Out of cloudland we are steering:
After groping, after fearing,
Into starlight we come trailing,
And we find the stars are true.
Still, O comrade, what of you?
You are gone, but we are sailing,
And the old ways are all new.

For the Lost and Unreturning
We have drifted, we have waited;
Uncommanded and unrated,
We have tossed and wandered, yearning
For a charm that comes no more
From the old lights by the shore:
We have shamed ourselves in learning
What you knew so long before.

For the Breed of the Far-going

Let's say “Good-bye”
Nor wait Love's latest breath
Poised now so lightly on the wing of Death,
While yet within our eyes one fervent gleam
Remains to hallow this, a passing dream:
Yes, yes “Good-bye,”
For it is best to part
While Love's low light still burns
Within the heart!

This is the hour of reckoning
Let me ask myself where I went wrong:
Was it in the studying
or the experience?

He went, and he was gay to go;
And I smiled on him as he went—
My boy! 'Twas well he didn't know
My darkest dread, or what it meant—

Just what it meant to smile and smile
And let my son go cheerily—
My son … and wondering all the while
What stranger would come back to me.

Then we shall see and know
What can't be known below,
For glory centers in his name;
No night's approach they fear,
They need no candle there,
The light of heav'n is God the Lamb.

He shines with beams of love
On all the saints above,
And all the saints with glory shine;
From him the angels bright,
Those happy sons of light,
Are fill'd with life and love divine.

No temple built with hands
In that bright region stands,
God is their palace, and their home:
With perfect pleasure blest,
In him the soul finds rest

The merry-go-round, the merry-go-round, the merry-go-round at Fowey!
They whirl around, they gallop around, man, woman, and girl, and boy;
They circle on wooden horses, white, black, brown, and bay,
To a loud monotonous tune that hath a trumpet bray.
All is dark where the circus stands on the narrow quay,
Save for its own yellow lamps, that illumine it brilliantly:
Painted purple and red, it pours a broad strong glow
Over an old-world house, with a pillared place below;
For the floor of the building rests on bandy columns small,

She came to my dream,
but was gone when I woke.
Where has she gone leaving me,
the one I long for?
Dreams may be empty,
but visit me as often as you can.

Of all the birds from East to West
—That tuneful are and dear,
I love that farmyard bird the best,
—They call him Chanticleer.

Gold plume and copper plume,
—Comb of scarlet gay;
'Tis he that scatters night and gloom,
—And whistles back the day!

He is the sun's brave herald
—That, ringing his blithe horn,
Calls round a world dew-pearled
—The heavenly airs of morn.

O clear gold, shrill and bold!
—He calls through creeping mist
The mountains from the night and cold
—To rose and amethyst.

He sets the birds to singing,

Dost ask, dear Captain, why from Syme
I have no invitation,
When well he knows he has with him
My first friends in the nation?

Is it because I love to toast,
And round the bottle hurl?
No! there conjecture wild is lost,
For Syme by God's no churl!—

Is 't lest with bawdy jests I bore,
As oft the matter of fact is?
No! Syme the theory can't abhor—
Who loves so well the practice.—

Is it a fear I should avow
Some heresy seditious?
No! Syme (but this is entre nous)
Is quite an old Tiresias.—

Jim says a sailor man
He means to be;
He'll sail a splendid ship
Out on the sea.

Dick wants to buy a farm
When he's a man
He'll get some cows and sheep
Soon as he can.

Tom says he'll keep a shop;
Nice things to eat,
Two windows full of cakes,
Down in the street.

I'd hate a stuffy shop—
When I'm a man
I'll buy a trotting horse