III.

  Wing-footed! thou abid’st with him
  Who asks it not; but he who hath
  Watched o’er the waves thy fading path
  Shall nevermore on ocean’s rim,
  At morn or eve, behold returning
  Thy high-heaped canvas shoreward yearning! 
  Thou first reveal’st to us thy face
  Turned o’er the shoulder’s parting grace,
  A moment glimpsed, then seen no more,—­
  Thou whose swift footsteps we can trace
  Away from every mortal door!

  IV.

  Nymph of the unreturning feet,
  How may I woo thee back?  But no,
  I do thee wrong to call thee so;
  ’Tis we are changed, not thou art fleet: 
  The man thy presence feels again
  Not in the blood, but in the brain,
  Spirit, that lov’st the upper air,
  Serene and vaporless and rare,
  Such as on mountain-heights we find
  And wide-viewed uplands of the mind,
  Or such as scorns to coil and sing
  Round any but the eagle’s wing
  Of souls that with long upward beat
  Have won an undisturbed retreat,
  Where, poised like winged victories,
  They mirror in unflinching eyes
  The life broad-basking ’neath their feet,—­
  Man always with his Now at strife,
  Pained with first gasps of earthly air,
  Then begging Death the last to spare,
  Still fearful of the ampler life.

  V.

  Not unto them dost thou consent
  Who, passionless, can lead at ease
  A life of unalloyed content,
  A life like that of landlocked seas,
  That feel no elemental gush
  Of tidal forces, no fierce rush
  Of storm deep-grasping, scarcely spent
  ’Twixt continent and continent: 
  Such quiet souls have never known
  Thy truer inspiration, thou
  Who lov’st to feel upon thy brow
  Spray from the plunging vessel thrown,
  Grazing the tusked lee shore, the cliff
  That o’er the abrupt gorge holds its breath,
  Where the frail hair’s-breadth of an If
  Is all that sunders life and death: 
  These, too, are cared for, and round these
  Bends her mild crook thy sister Peace;
  These in unvexed dependence lie
  Each ’neath his space of household sky;
  O’er them clouds wander, or the blue
  Hangs motionless the whole day through;
  Stars rise for them, and moons grow large
  And lessen in such tranquil wise
  As joys and sorrows do that rise
  Within their nature’s sheltered marge;
  Their hours into each other flit,
  Like the leaf-shadows of the vine
  And fig-tree under which they sit;
  And their still lives to heaven incline
  With an unconscious habitude,
  Unhistoried as smokes that rise
  From happy hearths and sight elude
  In kindred blue of morning skies.

  VI.