A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 80 pages of information about A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems.

A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 80 pages of information about A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems.

Spray of song that springs in April,
        light of love that laughs through May,
Live and die and live for ever: 
        nought of all thing far less fair
Keeps a surer life than these
        that seem to pass like fire away. 
In the souls they live which are
        but all the brighter that they were;
In the hearts that kindle, thinking
        what delight of old was there. 
Wind that shapes and lifts and shifts them
        bids perpetual memory play
Over dreams and in and out
        of deeds and thoughts which seem to wear
Light that leaps and runs and revels
        through the springing flames of spray.

Dawn is wild upon the waters
        where we drink of dawn to-day: 
Wide, from wave to wave rekindling
        in rebound through radiant air,
Flash the fires unwoven and woven
        again of wind that works in play,
Working wonders more than heart
        may note or sight may wellnigh dare,
Wefts of rarer light than colours
        rain from heaven, though this be rare. 
Arch on arch unbuilt in building,
        reared and ruined ray by ray,
Breaks and brightens, laughs and lessens,
        even till eyes may hardly bear
Light that leaps and runs and revels
        through the springing flames of spray.

Year on year sheds light and music
        rolled and flashed from bay to bay
Round the summer capes of time
        and winter headlands keen and bare
Whence the soul keeps watch, and bids
        her vassal memory watch and pray,
If perchance the dawn may quicken,
        or perchance the midnight spare. 
Silence quells not music, darkness
        takes not sunlight in her snare;
Shall not joys endure that perish? 
        Yea, saith dawn, though night say nay: 
Life on life goes out, but very
        life enkindles everywhere
Light that leaps and runs and revels
        through the springing flames of spray.

Friend, were life no more than this is,
        well would yet the living fare. 
All aflower and all afire
        and all flung heavenward, who shall say
Such a flash of life were worthless? 
        This is worth a world of care—­
Light that leaps and runs and revels
        through the springing flames of spray.

ON THE VERGE.

Here begins the sea that ends not
        till the world’s end.  Where we stand,
Could we know the next high sea-mark
        set beyond these waves that gleam,
We should know what never man hath
        known, nor eye of man hath scanned. 
Nought beyond these coiling clouds
        that melt like fume of shrines that steam
Breaks or stays the strength of waters
        till they pass our bounds of dream. 
Where the waste Land’s End leans westward,

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.