So when storms of wild emotion
   Strike the ocean
Of the poet’s soul, erelong
From each cave and rocky fastness,
   In its vastness,
Floats some fragment of a song: 

Front the far-off isles enchanted,
   Heaven has planted
With the golden fruit of Truth;
From the flashing surf, whose vision
   Gleams Elysian
In the tropic clime of Youth;

From the strong Will, and the Endeavor
   That forever
Wrestle with the tides of Fate
From the wreck of Hopes far-scattered,
   Tempest-shattered,
Floating waste and desolate;—­

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
   On the shifting
Currents of the restless heart;
Till at length in books recorded,
   They, like hoarded
Household words, no more depart.

CHRYSAOR

Just above yon sandy bar,
  As the day grows fainter and dimmer,
Lonely and lovely, a single star
  Lights the air with a dusky glimmer

Into the ocean faint and far
  Falls the trail of its golden splendor,
And the gleam of that single star
  Is ever refulgent, soft, and tender.

Chrysaor, rising out of the sea,
  Showed thus glorious and thus emulous,
Leaving the arms of Callirrhoe,
  Forever tender, soft, and tremulous.

Thus o’er the ocean faint and far
  Trailed the gleam of his falchion brightly;
Is it a God, or is it a star
  That, entranced, I gaze on nightly!

THE SECRET OF THE SEA

Ah! what pleasant visions haunt me
  As I gaze upon the sea! 
All the old romantic legends,
  All my dreams, come back to me.

Sails of silk and ropes of sandal,
  Such as gleam in ancient lore;
And the singing of the sailors,
  And the answer from the shore!

Most of all, the Spanish ballad
  Haunts me oft, and tarries long,
Of the noble Count Arnaldos
  And the sailor’s mystic song.

Like the long waves on a sea-beach,
  Where the sand as silver shines,
With a soft, monotonous cadence,
  Flow its unrhymed lyric lines:—­

Telling how the Count Arnaldos,
  With his hawk upon his hand,
Saw a fair and stately galley,
  Steering onward to the land;—­

How he heard the ancient helmsman
  Chant a song so wild and clear,
That the sailing sea-bird slowly
  Poised upon the mast to hear,

Till his soul was full of longing,
  And he cried, with impulse strong,—­
“Helmsman! for the love of heaven,
  Teach me, too, that wondrous song!”

“Wouldst thou,”—­so the helmsman answered,
  “Learn the secret of the sea? 
Only those who brave its dangers
  Comprehend its mystery!”

In each sail that skims the horizon,
  In each landward-blowing breeze,
I behold that stately galley,
  Hear those mournful melodies;