Sedges, have you sung too much, Sedges gray along the shore? Can this autumn tempest touch Answering chords in you no more? Is the summer all forgot?-- Now the ice is dark and strong That has bound you to the spot-- Did you die of too much song? Something in me is a harp Played by every wanton breeze. Moaning soft and piping sharp Are its wondrous melodies. Is the playing over-fast Though the answer now is strong? Like the sedges at the last Will it die of too much song? [WHEREVER MY DREAMS GO] Wherever my dreams go, you are always there, And you and I have gone to many a land, Seeing high hills at dawn and desert sand, Temples and mosques and people bowed in prayer. We too have prayed in many places where Beauty has come as I have clasped your hand, And through long silence learned to understand The dumb sweet language of your eyes and hair. We have been lovers in all fair romances Beyond the rising or the sunken sun. There have been foes to meet, and I have done Great deeds beneath the splendor of your glances.... And yet I dreamed alone; you could not guess What joy you brought into my loneliness. [OUT OF THE LITTLENESS] Out of the littleness that wraps my days, The oppressive mist of gray and common things, Sometimes my dream on its audacious wings, Dripping with golden fire, above the haze, Flashes and veers against the sudden blaze Of sunlight. There no other wings may gleam But only yours, companioning my dream In its strange flight up new and radiant ways. And once, I thought, in a far solitude, The black waves moaned and broke unutterably On a stern cliff where hand in hand we stood. There were none near us when the dark had gone,-- Only the clean wind of a sailless sea, And you and I alone in the great dawn. NAHANT Last night the sea was an enchanted moan And a pale pathway that the moonlight made. All night it sorrowed in the dark alone, Groping with ghostly fingers, half afraid, Up the great rocks and sobbing back again, Weary of search, yet still unsatisfied. It seemed to have the voice of all dead men And all fair women who had ever died. But now the sun has risen, and the spray Leaps into sudden light along the shore. Each little wave has caught a golden ray-- As if the dawn had never come before. Beyond the cliffs brown fishing boats go by Under the reach of the wide laughing sky. QUI SUB LUNA ERRANT In a strange land they dwell, too far away From sunlight and the common mirth of men Ever to come within our casual ken. We see them not, but if by chance we stray Down cypress aisles when the wan summer day Draws to a thin and sickly close, we hear Murmur of mad speech by some watery weir Or languid laughter and faint sound of play.