Comes the respite, comes the guerdon; The perfect truce arrives In the honey-dropping twilight, The southwestering pallid sunshine, The magian clouds a-fire, The mooring galleon-wind: At whose spell, Potent daily, The lulled water is beguiled Back to saneness, back to sweetness. All its arrowy hissing atoms Gather from the chase forsaken; The sphered galaxy of bubbles, Fragments, motes, the lees unrestful, Disunite, as to heard music, Like weird dancers, from their wreathings Each to its cool grotto swaying; Till there follows, on their fervor, Depth, and crystal clarity. So thy life is, so thy life! Darkling to beatitude, Shaken in the saving change. And the spirit made wise, not weary By the throes that youth endureth, When old age falls, evening-placid, On the mystery unriddled, Yet in empire, yet in honor, In submission not ignoble, Glistens to a central quiet, Leal to the most lovely moon. TO A YOUNG POET. SIGH not to be remembered, dear, Nor for Time’s fickle graces strive; Vex not thy spirit’s songful cheer With the sick ardor to survive. But be content, thou quick bright thing A while than lasting stars more fair: A lone high-flashing skylark’s wing Across obliterating air. O rich in immortality! Not thee Fame’s graven stones benight; But ever, to some world-worn eye, All Heaven is bluer for thy flight. DE MORTUIS. THE skilfullest of mankind! So praise him, reckoning By shot in the sea-gull’s wing, By doubts in boyhood’s mind. DOWN STREAM. SCARRED hemlock roots, Oaks in mail, and willow-shoots Spring’s first-knighted; Clinging aspens grouped between, Slender, misty-green, Faintly affrighted: Far hills behind, Sombre growth, with sunlight lined, On their edges; Banks hemmed in with maiden-hair, And the straight and fair Phalanx of sedges: Wee wings and eyes, Wild blue gemmy dragon-flies, Fearless rangers; Drowsy turtles in a tribe Diving, with a gibe Muttered at strangers; Wren, bobolink, Robin, at the grassy brink; Great frogs jesting; And the beetle, for no grief Half-across his leaf Sighing and resting; In the keel’s way, Unwithdrawing bream at play, Till from branches Chestnut-blossoms, loosed aloft, Graze them with their soft Full avalanches! This is very odd! Boldly sings the river-god: ‘Pilgrim rowing! From the Hyperborean air Wherefore, and O where Should man be going?’ Slave to a dream, Me no urgings and no theme Can embolden; Now no more the oars swing back, Drip, dip, till black Waters froth golden.