Build to-day, then, strong and sure, Thus alone can we attain To those turrets, where the eye SAND OF THE DESERT IN AN HOUR GLASS. A HANDFUL of red sand, from the hot clime Within this glass becomes the spy of Time, How many weary centuries has it been Perhaps the camels of the Ishmaelite When into Egypt from the patriarch's sight Perhaps the feet of Moses, burnt and bare, Or Pharaoh's flashing wheels into the air Or Mary, with the Christ of Nazareth Whose pilgrimage of hope and love and faith SAND OF THE DESERT. Or anchorites beneath Engaddi's palms And singing slow their old Armenian psalms Or caravans, that from Bassora's gate Or Mecca's pilgrims, confident of Fate, 329 These have passed over it, or may have passed! And as I gaze, these narrow walls expand;-- Stretches the desert with its shifting sand, And borne aloft by the sustaining blast, And onward, and across the setting sun, The column and its broader shadow run, The vision vanishes! These walls again Shut out the hot, immeasurable plain; BIRDS OF PASSAGE. BLACK shadows fall From the lindens tall, That lift aloft their massive wall And from the realms Of the shadowy elms A tide-like darkness overwhelms But the night is fair, And everywhere A warm, soft, vapor fills the air, And distant sounds seem near; And above, in the light Of the star-lit night, Swift birds of passage wing their flight Through the dewy atmosphere. I hear the beat Of their pinions fleet, As from the land of snow and sleet I hear the cry Of their voices high Falling dreamily through the sky, O, say not so! Those sounds that flow In murmurs of delight and woe Come not from wings of birds. THE OPEN WINDOW 331 They are the throngs Of the poet's songs, Murmurs of pleasures, and pains, and wrongs, The sound of winged words. This is the cry Of souls, that high On toiling, beating pinions, fly, From their distant flight Through realms of light It falls into our world of night, With the murmuring sound of rhyme. THE OPEN WINDOW. THE old house by the lindens I saw the nursery windows The large Newfoundland house-dog They walked not under the lindens, The birds sang in the branches, But the voices of the children Will be heard in dreams alone! And the boy that walked beside me, Why closer in mine, ah! closer, KING WITLAF'S DRINKING-HORN. WITLAF, a king of the Saxons, That, whenever they sat at their revels, So sat they once at Christmas, In their beards the red wine glistened They drank to the soul of Witlaf, They drank to the Saints and Martyrs And as soon as the horn was empty |