Classic Poem

Slowly upon the glowing evening skies
The orange cloudlets fade in lifeless gray,
While from these broken towers my yearning eyes
O'er western seas pursue the dying day,
Till where the sinking sunbeams late would burn,
Fringed with cold fires, the deepening waters churn.

No sound arises save the sea-bird's cry;
Where drowned beneath his stars the Day-God lies
But hark! like some weird whisper of a sigh
The dim mysterious ocean-voices rise,
The beat of hidden pulses from afar;
The never-silent moaning of the bar.

Here let me lie and trace in Fancy's glass
Again the sea-tales strange of classic eld,
Watch with wreathed horns the floating Tritons pass,
And sea-nymphs last of Pagan eyes beheld,
Fair Nereids sporting on the moonlit sand,
And Sirens calling from the enchanted land.

There breathes no breath across the heaving plain,
No phantom sail awakes the slumbering sea;
Here will I muse and watch, a Greek again,
The spume-flecked currents drifting silently,
And people half-hid coves and shadowy capes
With gliding presences and elfin shapes.

Even thus the old sea spake, nor otherwise,
To Homer's dreaming fantasy of yore;
But ah! our duller brains and dimmer eyes
The primal glory fled from sea and shore.
No more may we discern the visions fair
Which lit our youngling planet everywhere.

Nay, nay, the old grace fades not; land and sea
Enchanted are, as erst when Man was young;
Dull knowledge flouts not all their mystery,
Not all fair dreams are dreamt, or sweet songs sung
Still, still, while youth and spring-tide come to birth,
These fair fantastic visions light the earth.

Here let me dream, and for a while forget,
Beneath the magic moonlight's ghostly smile,
Life's rude tumultuous waves, the toil, the fret,
The strifes, the jealous hates, the wrong, the guile,
And wake from Nature's arms, with new-purged sense,
To that immortal Pagan innocence.