SLEEP

Men all, and birds, and creeping beasts,
  When the dark of night is deep,
From the moving wonder of their lives
  Commit themselves to sleep.

Without a thought, or fear, they shut
  The narrow gates of sense;
Heedless and quiet, in slumber turn
  Their strength to impotence.

The transient strangeness of the earth
  Their spirits no more see: 
Within a silent gloom withdrawn,
  They slumber in secrecy.

Two worlds they have—­a globe forgot
  Wheeling from dark to light;
And all the enchanted realm of dream
  That burgeons out of night.

THE STRANGER

Half-hidden in a graveyard,
  In the blackness of a yew,
Where never living creature stirs,
  Nor sunbeam pierces through,

Is a tomb, green and crooked,—­
  Its faded legend gone,—­
With but one rain-worn cherub’s head
  Of smouldering stone.

There, when the dusk is falling,
  Silence broods so deep
It seems that every wind that breathes
  Blows from the field of sleep.

Day breaks in heedless beauty,
  Kindling each drop of dew,
But unforsaking shadow dwells
  Beneath this lonely yew.

And, all else lost and faded,
  Only this listening head
Keeps with a strange unanswering smile
  Its secret with the dead.

NEVER MORE SAILOR

Never more, Sailor,
Shall thou be
Tossed on the wind-ridden,
Restless sea. 
Its tides may labour;
All the world
Shake ’neath that weight
Of waters hurled: 
But its whole shock
Can only stir
Thy dust to a quiet
Even quieter. 
Thou mock’st at land
Who now art come
To such a small
And shallow home;
Yet bore the sea
Full many a care
For bones that once
A sailor’s were. 
And though the grave’s
Deep soundlessness
Thy once sea-deafened
Ear distress,
No robin ever
On the deep
Hopped with his song
To haunt thy sleep.

ARABIA

Far are the shades of Arabia,
  Where the Princes ride at noon,
’Mid the verdurous vales and thickets,
  Under the ghost of the moon;
And so dark is that vaulted purple
  Flowers in the forest rise
And toss into blossom ’gainst the phantom stars
  Pale in the noonday skies.

Sweet is the music of Arabia
  In my heart, when out of dreams
I still in the thin clear mirk of dawn
  Descry her gliding streams;
Hear her strange lutes on the green banks
  Ring loud with the grief and delight
Of the dim-silked dark-haired Musicians
  In the brooding silence of night.

They haunt me—­her lutes and her forests;
  No beauty on earth I see
But shadowed with that dreams recalls
  Her loveliness to me: 
Still eyes look coldly upon me,
  Cold voices whisper and say—­
“He is crazed with the spell of far Arabia,
  They have stolen his wits away.”