The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveller to the shore,
   And the tide rises, the tide falls.

SONNETS

MY CATHEDRAL

Like two cathedral towers these stately pines
  Uplift their fretted summits tipped with cones;
  The arch beneath them is not built with stones,
  Not Art but Nature traced these lovely lines,
And carved this graceful arabesque of vines;
  No organ but the wind here sighs and moans,
  No sepulchre conceals a martyr’s bones. 
  No marble bishop on his tomb reclines. 
Enter! the pavement, carpeted with leaves,
  Gives back a softened echo to thy tread! 
  Listen! the choir is singing; all the birds,
In leafy galleries beneath the eaves,
  Are singing! listen, ere the sound be fled,
  And learn there may be worship with out words.

THE BURIAL OF THE POET

RICHARD HENRY DANA

In the old churchyard of his native town,
  And in the ancestral tomb beside the wall,
  We laid him in the sleep that comes to all,
  And left him to his rest and his renown. 
The snow was falling, as if Heaven dropped down
  White flowers of Paradise to strew his pall;—­
  The dead around him seemed to wake, and call
  His name, as worthy of so white a crown. 
And now the moon is shining on the scene,
  And the broad sheet of snow is written o’er
  With shadows cruciform of leafless trees,
As once the winding-sheet of Saladin
  With chapters of the Koran; but, ah! more
  Mysterious and triumphant signs are these.

NIGHT

Into the darkness and the hush of night
  Slowly the landscape sinks, and fades away,
  And with it fade the phantoms of the day,
  The ghosts of men and things, that haunt the light,
The crowd, the clamor, the pursuit, the flight,
  The unprofitable splendor and display,
  The agitations, and the cares that prey
  Upon our hearts, all vanish out of sight. 
The better life begins; the world no more
  Molests us; all its records we erase
  From the dull common-place book of our lives,
That like a palimpsest is written o’er
  With trivial incidents of time and place,
  And lo! the ideal, hidden beneath, revives.

L’ENVOI

THE POET AND HIS SONGS

As the birds come in the Spring,
  We know not from where;
As the stars come at evening
  From depths of the air;

As the rain comes from the cloud,
  And the brook from the ground;
As suddenly, low or loud,
  Out of silence a sound;

As the grape comes to the vine,
  The fruit to the tree;
As the wind comes to the pine,
  And the tide to the sea;