(Off Long Island Sound.)

Between the shore and the distant sky-lands, Where a ship’s dim shape seems etched on space, There lies this cluster of lovely islands, Like laughing mermaids grouped in grace.

I look out over the waves and wonder, Are they not sirens who dwell in the sea? When the tide runs high they dip down under Like mirthful bathers who sport in glee.

When the tide runs low they lift their shoulders Above the billows and gayly spread Their soft green garments along the boulders Of grim gray granite that form their bed.

Close by the group, in sheltered places, Many a ship at anchor lies, And drinks the charm of their smiling faces, As lovers drink smiles from maidens’ eyes.

But true to the harsh and stern old ocean, As maids in a harem are true to one, They give him all of their hearts’ devotion, Though wooed forever by moon and sun.

A ship sails on that has bravely waded Through foaming billows to sue in vain; A whip-poor-will flies that has serenaded And sung unanswered his plaintive strain.

In the sea’s great arms I see them lying, Bright and beaming and fond and fair, While the jealous July day is dying In a crimson fury of mad despair.

The desolate moon drifts slowly over, And covers its face with the lace of a cloud, While the sea, like a glad triumphant lover, Clasps close his islands and laughs aloud.

MY GRAVE.

If, when I die, I must be buried, let No cemetery engulph me--no lone grot, Where the great palpitating world comes not, Save when, with heart bowed down and eyelids wet, It pays its last sad melancholy debt To some outjourneying pilgrim. May my lot Be rather to lie in some much-used spot, Where human life, with all its noise and fret, Throbs on about me. Let the roll of wheels, With all earth’s sounds of pleasure, commerce, love, And rush of hurrying feet surge o’er my head. Even in my grave I shall be one who feels Close kinship with the pulsing world above; And too deep silence would distress me, dead.

REFUTED.

“Anticipation is sweeter than realization.”

It may be, yet I have not found it so. In those first golden dreams of future fame I did not find such happiness as came When toil was crowned with triumph. Now I know My words have recognition and will go Straight to some listening heart my early aim To win the idle glory of a name Pales like a candle in the noonday’s glow.

So with the deeper joys of which I dreamed: Life yields more rapture than did childhood’s fancies, And each year brings more pleasure than I waited. Friendship proves truer than of old it seemed, And, all beyond youth’s passion-hued romances, Love is more perfect than anticipated.

THE LOST LAND.

There is a story of a beauteous land, Where fields were fertile and where flowers were bright; Where tall towers glistened in the morning light, Where happy children wandered hand in hand, Where lovers wrote their names upon the sand. They say it vanished from all human sight, The hungry sea devoured it in a night. You doubt the tale? ah, you will understand; For, as men muse upon that fable old, They give sad credence always at the last, However they have caviled at its truth, When with a tear-dimmed vision they behold, Swift sinking in the ocean of the Past, The lovely lost Atlantis of their Youth.

THE SOUTH.

A Queen of indolence and idle grace, Robed in the vestments of a costly gown, She turns the languor of her lovely face Upon progression with a lazy frown. Her throne is built upon a marshy down; Malarial mosses wreathe her like old lace; With slim crossed feet, unshod and bare and brown. She sits indifferent to the world’s swift race. Across the seas there stalks an ogre grim: Too languid she for even fear’s alarms, While frightened nations rally in defence, She lifts her smiling Creole eyes to him, And reaching out her shapely unwashed arms, She clasps her rightful lover--Pestilence.

A SAILOR’S WIFE.