Sweet voyager of night! whose fairy bark Sails silently around the dusky earth, Whose silver lamp in chastened splendor burns, Trimmed by the hand that fashioned thee so fair, And sent thee forth on thy eternal way, The nearest and the brightest to our eyes Of Heavens innumerable host—sail on Thy joyous way, in beauty ’mid the stars, And catch the song of those bright sentinels, Who watch the outposts on the bounds of time, Sending in vain their rays to pierce the gloom Of drear immensity. The lover’s eye— Whether he grasps the wreck amid the waves, Or treads in pride the well appointed deck Of richly freighted galleon; or is doom’d, Like Selkirk, in his lonely isle, to dwell More desolate because his ear had heard, In Scottish valley, the sweet Sabbath bell; Or chases, with the seamen of the north, The monster-whale, by Greenland’s sounding shore, Where crystal icebergs lift their glittering peaks, And bathe with rainbow hues the snowy vales; Or robs the otter of his glossy coat, Where the Oregon sings her endless hymn To the Pacific’s waters; or gathers Birds’ nests ’mid the endless summer isles, Where waves the cocoa-nut and lofty palm O’er crystal billows, ’mid whose coral groves The fish of brightest tints in beauty swim— In health or sickness, joy or sorrow, turns Inquiringly to thee, and speaks of love— Love that endures when strength and reason fails. So the poor idiot on the moonlit hill, Patting his dog, his last and truest friend, Looks up with eye of more than usual fire, And, ’mid his idle chattering, speaks the name Of one who loved him best in boyhood’s dream.