Thy present sweetness will be turned to brine; Thou'lt hardly make one petty, paltry wave. Lovest thou the sun? He will not know thee there. Is't sweet to run, Know thine own whence and where? 'Tis here thy joy, thy love, thy life are thine; There thou wilt neither be, nor do, nor have. The mighty sea Will blindly number thee To bear the ships, send thee to shape the shore That thou art scorning; Or some awful morning, Set thee to pluck some sailor from his oar And drink his weary life; O fear this chance of strife! Or what may be Else, dead monotony. Give o'er thy headlong haste, dwell here with me, Why lose thyself in the vast, hungry sea? These thoughts I cast into the wiser stream, And lay and heard it run the hours away; And then above The beauty and the peace, It sang of love; And in that glad release I knew my thoughts had run beyond my dream, Had seen the laboring river and the bay. "'Tis joy to run! Else life would ne'er be done, I ne'er should know the triumphing of death, Nor its revealing; Nor the eager feeling Of fuller life, the promise of the breath That fleets the open sea: All this was given to me Once as I won My first great leap; the sun I knew my king, and laughed, and since that day I run and sing; he wills, and I obey." EDITORIAL NOTES. OPTIMISM, REAL AND FALSE.