If we smile at your contortions Toiling furiously for - nothing It is less in mirth than sadness. For I fear we fail to equal Your stout heart and resolution Wigwagging your bold defiance. Yes, while we are battling shadows, Wasting life in futile effort, Can we wonder that the angels Grieve in Heaven at our folly? THE DREAMER He lounges on the wharf and whittles pegs While his pathetic gaze drifts out to sea, Around him fishnets, anchors, empty kegs And coils of rope are stored. His revery Though deep, is sometimes broken by a sigh As strange lights kindle in his faded eye. A shapeless hat seems floating on his hair Of wavy white. His clothes are patched and worn His fingers palsy shaken, and an air Of pathos and of helplessness forlorn Enfolds him, as he lays his pipe aside And gazes sadly at the ebbing tide. His vision seems athirst to drink its fill Of ocean’s mystery that he loves so well, For he has lived adventure, lives it still, Though age, long since, has yielded to the spell Of brooding calm. No idle dreamer he, His thoughts are busied on some far off sea. Stern old Magellan and Sir Francis Drake Heard tales from just such ancient sailor men, Tales that inspired a zeal to undertake Those stirring voyages beyond the ken Of their small world. Discoverers bold, - and yet They steered the course some unknown dreamer set! THE CHANT OF THE NIGHT WIND O the wind in the chimney place thrums a wild strain A chant that no mortal has known, And my soul deeply stirs at its eerie refrain In my dim lighted chamber, - alone. For strange lifting cadences mark its sweet song With gladness and beauty and fear, Till chords, long forgotten, in memory throng Like a shell that I press to my ear. O where have you wandered, melodious breeze That sounds such a magical note, Have you winged on your journey, o’er limitless seas From some Ultima Thule remote? A region no mortal may ever explore Whose legended boundaries lie On foam whitened beaches and sinister shore And crags that are gnashing the sky! Where ice fields aglow in the dark of the moon Reflect the volcano’s red glare - We may ponder and doubt - but our souls are in tune To the verve of that uncanny air! For the spirits of night strum their wild elfin lyres And they harp on invisible strings, While a music, unearthly, floats down from those wires Like the tremulous flutter of wings. For those notes so elusive, so mystically sweet, We may sense but their vague undertone, For they baffle our hearing, so faintly they beat On the verge of the audible zone.