A SHADOW OF THE NIGHT

     Close on the edge of a midsummer dawn
     In troubled dreams I went from land to land,
     Each seven-colored like the rainbow’s arc,
     Regions where never fancy’s foot had trod
     Till then; yet all the strangeness seemed not strange,
     At which I wondered, reasoning in my dream
     With twofold sense, well knowing that I slept. 
     At last I came to this our cloud-hung earth,
     And somewhere by the seashore was a grave,
     A woman’s grave, new-made, and heaped with flowers;
     And near it stood an ancient holy man
     That fain would comfort me, who sorrowed not
     For this unknown dead woman at my feet. 
     But I, because his sacred office held
     My reverence, listened; and ’twas thus he spake:—­
     “When next thou comest thou shalt find her still
     In all the rare perfection that she was. 
     Thou shalt have gentle greeting of thy love! 
     Her eyelids will have turned to violets,
     Her bosom to white lilies, and her breath
     To roses.  What is lovely never dies,
     But passes into other loveliness,
     Star-dust, or sea-foam, flower, or winged air. 
     If this befalls our poor unworthy flesh,
     Think thee what destiny awaits the soul! 
     What glorious vesture it shall wear at last!”
     While yet he spoke, seashore and grave and priest
     Vanished, and faintly from a neighboring spire
     Fell five slow solemn strokes upon my ear. 
     Then I awoke with a keen pain at heart,
     A sense of swift unutterable loss,
     And through the darkness reached my hand to touch
     Her cheek, soft-pillowed on one restful palm—­
     To be quite sure!

     OUTWARD BOUND

     I leave behind me the elm-shadowed square
       And carven portals of the silent street,
       And wander on with listless, vagrant feet
     Through seaward-leading alleys, till the air
     Smells of the sea, and straightway then the care
       Slips from my heart, and life once more is sweet. 
       At the lane’s ending lie the white-winged fleet. 
     O restless Fancy, whither wouldst thou fare? 
     Here are brave pinions that shall take thee far—­
       Gaunt hulks of Norway; ships of red Ceylon;
       Slim-masted lovers of the blue Azores! 
     ’Tis but an instant hence to Zanzibar,
       Or to the regions of the Midnight Sun: 
       Ionian isles are thine, and all the fairy shores!

     REMINISCENCE

     Though I am native to this frozen zone
       That half the twelvemonth torpid lies, or dead;
       Though the cold azure arching overhead
     And the Atlantic’s never-ending moan
     Are mine by heritage, I must have known
       Life otherwhere in epochs long since fled;
       For in my veins some Orient blood is red,