Thus alone can we attain To those turrets, where the eye And one boundless reach of sky. SAND OF THE DESERT IN AN A HOUR-GLASS HANDFUL of red sand, from the hot clime Within this glass becomes the spy of Time, The minister of Thought. How many weary centuries has it been About those deserts blown! How many strange vicissitudes has seen, Perhaps the camels of the Ishmaelite When into Egypt from the patriarch's sight Perhaps the feet of Moses, burnt and bare, Or Pharaoh's flashing wheels into the air Scattered it as they sped; Or Mary, with the Christ of Nazareth Held close in her caress, Whose pilgrimage of hope and love and faith Or anchorites beneath Engaddi's palms And singing slow their old Armenian psalms Or caravans, that from Bassora's gate Or Mecca's pilgrims, confident of Fate, These have passed over it, or may have passed! It counts the passing hour. And as I gaze, these narrow walls expand; Stretches the desert with its shifting sand, And borne aloft by the sustaining blast, Dilates into a column high and vast, And onward, and across the setting sun, Across the boundless plain, The column and its broader shadow run, Till thought pursues in vain. The vision vanishes! These walls again Shut out the hot, immeasurable plain ; BIRDS OF PASSAGE B LACK shadows fall From the lindens tall, That lift aloft their massive wall Against the southern sky; And from the realms Of the shadowy elms A tide-like darkness overwhelms The fields that round us lie. But the night is fair, And everywhere A warm, soft vapor fills the air, And distant sounds seem near; And above, in the light Of the star-lit night, Swift birds of passage wing their flight I hear the beat Of their pinions fleet, As from the land of snow and sleet They seek a southern lea. I hear the cry Of their voices high Falling dreamily through the sky, O, say not so! Those sounds that flow In murmurs of delight and woe Come not from wings of birds. They are the throngs Of the poet's songs, Murmurs of pleasures, and pains, and wrongs, The sound of winged words. This is the cry Of souls, that high On toiling, beating pinions, fly, Seeking a warmer clime. From their distant flight Through realms of light It falls into our world of night, With the murmuring sound of rhyme. THE OPEN WINDOW THE 'HE old house by the lindens And on the gravelled pathway I saw the nursery windows The large Newfoundland house-dog They walked not under the lindens, They played not in the hall; But shadow, and silence, and sadness Were hanging over all. |