Like a cool vapor falling
The voice of death is calling:
" In my dim land is Peace.
By the Lethe-languid fountains,
In my mist-shrouded mountains
All cares and clamors cease. "

I WALKED the nomad road that, ribbon-thrown,
Climbed restless on in search of higher dawns;
I gathered dandelion treasures, strown
Bright, newly coined, on the lazy lawns.

Up, up I went, until I felt God's breath
Blow from my soul all earthly dust away;
I longed to spread Icarian wings of Death
And fly beyond the glorious gates of day.

In dreams on a far-off shore I lay
(Dreams that were full of dread),
Where the purple clouds of a dying day
Shadowed a sea of red —
Shadowed a sea as red as the blood
Of one that was slain in his lustihood,
A sea as red as a lover's blood
Struck down in his amorous lustihood.

A silver shallop glides to and fro,
Over the ghostly crimson sea,
(Over the ghostly crimson sea
I watch its oars as they come and go);
The wavelets quiver and gleam:
No sounds are there that the silence break,
But astern in the shallop's silvery wake

Hail to thee, fair noble lady!
Much I marvel who art thou,
With thy bright eye clear and steady,
And thy broad resplendent brow!

Well becomes the Spanish bonnet
Those dark locks that woo the wind,
And the plume that flutters on it
Is not freer than thy mind.

Ruthven's lady, — saith it rightly?
Scotland owns the ancient name;
Many a knight that bore him knightly,
Many a bright and beauteous dame.

Yet, methinks, those haughty glances,
Suit not our degenerate days;
Knights no longer splinter lances,

Ay, leave him alone to sleep forever,
Till the strong archangel calls for the dead,
By the verdant bank of that rushing river,
Where first they pillowed his mighty head!

Lowly may be the turf that covers
The sacred grave of his last repose;
But oh! there's a glory around it hovers,
Broad as the day-break, and bright as its close.

Though marble pillars were reared above him,
Temples and obelisks rich and rare, —
Better he dwells in the hearts that love him,
Cold and lone as he slumbers there.

It broke on the hush of morn, —
It startled the dull midnight,
Like the stirring peal of a battle horn,
It summoned them forth to fight:
It rose o'er the swelling hill,
By the meadows green it was heard,
Calling out for the strength of the freeman's will,
And the might of the freeman's sword!

The rivers heard the noise, —
The valleys rung it out;
And every heart leaped high at the voice
Of that thrilling battle-shout!
They sprang from the bridal bed,
From the pallet of labor's rest;

My being bows to thee, —
My spirit knows the sign,
The star that rules thy destiny
Is a mightier star than mine;
At morning and by night,
Have I followed its clear light,
And I feel the sure control
Of the spell upon my soul.

Thy beauty is a thing,
To gaze at from afar;
A bird upon its heavenward wing,
The lustre of a star:
Yet in dreams of my unrest,
Do I fold thee on my breast,
And start from troubled sleep
To watch and pray and weep.

I mingle with the gay,
They court me with their wiles, —

Again upon the sounding shore,
And oh how blest, again alone!
I could not bear to hear thy roar,
Thy deep, thy long majestic tone;
I could not bear to think that one
Could view with me thy swelling might,
And like a very stock or stone,
Turn coldly from the glorious sight,
And seek the idle world, to hate and fear and fight.

Thou art the same, eternal sea!
The earth hath many shapes and forms,
Of hill and valley, flower and tree;
Fields that the fervid noontide warms,
Or winter's rugged grasp deforms,

Where are the elfin, minor strains of Pan
That down the moonbeams to my sleep would glide,
To sport among the harp strings of my dreams
And wake the sleeping harmony to smile?
War sounds his brazen trumpet o'er the world,
Shattering the inner ear with loud discord,
Scorching the Muse's acolytes with flame,
And with'ring Beauty with a Kaiser's laugh.
Yet, is Pan dead? Sometimes above the din
Of brutal, bloody strife, dim, heart-heard notes
Call to my soul like ghosts of yearning sounds—
I will find Pan! My Inner Self will go

Dark rolling current, whose impatient course,
Bending through yellow fields of ripened grain,
Tends downward, till the bubbles of thy source
Ride on the tumult of the heaving main, —

As thus thou rollest on, exulting stream,
To join thy rapid parent, fierce and wide, —
Like the wild thoughts of an unquiet dream,
I send my fancies down thy restless tide.

O Sun, that lingerest in the liquid west,
Stamp with the gold of thine illustrious beams
What, on this wave caressing and carest,
I write to her the mistress of my dreams: