When, after storms that woodlands rue,
  To valleys comes atoning dawn,
The robins blithe their orchard-sports renew;
  And meadow-larks, no more withdrawn
Caroling fly in the languid blue;
The while, from many a hid recess,
Alert to partake the blessedness,
The pouring mites their airy dance pursue. 
  So, after ocean’s ghastly gales,
When laughing light of hoyden morning
    breaks,
      Every finny hider wakes—­
  From vaults profound swims up with
    glittering scales;
  Through the delightsome sea he sails,
With shoals of shining tiny things
Frolic on every wave that flings
  Against the prow its showery spray;
All creatures joying in the morn,
Save them forever from joyance torn,
  Whose bark was lost where now the
    dolphins play;
Save them that by the fabled shore,
  Down the pale stream are washed away,
Far to the reef of bones are borne;
  And never revisits them the light,
Nor sight of long-sought land and pilot more;
  Nor heed they now the lone bird’s flight
Round the lone spar where mid-sea surges
    pour.

COMMEMORATIVE OF A NAVAL VICTORY

Sailors there are of the gentlest breed,
  Yet strong, like every goodly thing;
The discipline of arms refines,
  And the wave gives tempering. 
  The damasked blade its beam can fling;
It lends the last grave grace: 
The hawk, the hound, and sworded nobleman
  In Titian’s picture for a king,
Are of hunter or warrior race.

In social halls a favored guest
  In years that follow victory won,
How sweet to feel your festal fame
  In woman’s glance instinctive thrown: 
  Repose is yours—­your deed is known,
It musks the amber wine;
It lives, and sheds a light from storied days
  Rich as October sunsets brown,
Which make the barren place to shine.

But seldom the laurel wreath is seen
  Unmixed with pensive pansies dark;
There’s a light and a shadow on every man
  Who at last attains his lifted mark—­
  Nursing through night the ethereal spark. 
Elate he never can be;
He feels that spirit which glad had hailed his
    worth,
  Sleep in oblivion.—­The shark
Glides white through the phosphorus sea.

A MEDITATION

How often in the years that close,
  When truce had stilled the sieging gun,
The soldiers, mounting on their works,
  With mutual curious glance have run
From face to face along the fronting show,
And kinsman spied, or friend—­even in a foe.

What thoughts conflicting then were shared,
  While sacred tenderness perforce
Welled from the heart and wet the eye;
  And something of a strange remorse
Rebelled against the sanctioned sin of blood,
And Christian wars of natural brotherhood.