Peace! Peace! Orestes-like I breathe this prayer!
Descend with broad-winged flight,

The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair,
The best-belovèd Night!

SEA-WEED

When descends on the Atlantic

The gigantic

Storm-wind of the equinox,

Landward in his wrath he scourges
The toiling surges,

Laden with sea-weed from the rocks:

From Bermuda's reefs; from edges

Of sunken ledges,

In some far-off bright Azore;

From Bahama, and the dashing,

Silver-flashing

Surges of San Salvador;

From the tumbling surf, that buries

The Orkneyan skerries,

Answering the hoarse Hebrides;

And from wrecks of ships, and drifting
Spars, uplifting

On the desolate, rainy seas;

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting

Currents of the restless main;

Till in sheltered coves, and reaches

Of sandy beaches,

All have found repose again.

So when storms of wild emotion

Strike the ocean

Of the poet's soul, erelong

From each cave and rocky fastness,

In its vastness,

Floats some fragment of a song.

From the far-off isles enchanted,
Heaven has planted

With the golden fruit of Truth;

From the flashing surf, whose vision

Gleams Elysian

In the tropic clime of Youth;

From the strong Will and the Endeavor

That for ever

Wrestle with the tides of Fate;

From the wrecks of Hope far-scattered,

Tempest-shattered,

Floating waste and desolate;

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting

On the shifting

Currents of the restless heart;

Till at length in books recorded,

They, like hoarded

Household words, no more depart.

MY LOST YOUTH

Often I think of the beautiful town

That is seated by the sea;

Often in thought go up and down

The pleasant streets of that dear old town,
And my youth comes back to me.
And a verse of a Lapland song

Is haunting my memory still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,

5

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." 10

I can see the shadowy lines of its trees,
And catch, in sudden gleams,
The sheen of the far-surrounding seas,
And islands that were the Hesperides
Of all my boyish dreams.

And the burden of that old song,
It murmurs and whispers still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I remember the black wharves and the slips,
And the sea-tides tossing free;

And Spanish sailors with bearded lips,

And the beauty and mystery of the ships,

And the magic of the sea.

And the voice of that wayward song

Is singing and saying still:

"A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I remember the bulwarks by the shore,
And the fort upon the hill;

The sunrise gun, with its hollow roar,
The drum beat repeated o'er and o'er,
Б And the bugle wild and shrill.

And the music of that old song
Throbs in my memory still:

"A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

10 I remember the sea-fight far away,

15

How it thundered o'er the tide! And the dead captains as they lay

In their graves, o'erlooking the tranquil bay

Where they in battle died.

And the sound of that mournful song

Goes through me with a thrill:

"A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

I can see the breezy dome of groves,

20 The shadows of Deering's Woods;

25

And the friendships old and the early loves
Come back with a Sabbath sound, as of doves
In quiet neighborhoods.

And the verse of that sweet old song,

It flutters and murmurs still:

"A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”