White swan of cities, slumbering in thy nest
  So wonderfully built among the reeds
  Of the lagoon, that fences thee and feeds,
  As sayeth thy old historian and thy guest! 
White water-lily, cradled and caressed
  By ocean streams, and from the silt and weeds
  Lifting thy golden filaments and seeds,
  Thy sun-illumined spires, thy crown and crest! 
White phantom city, whose untrodden streets
  Are rivers, and whose pavements are the shifting
  Shadows of palaces and strips of sky;
I wait to see thee vanish like the fleets
  Seen in mirage, or towers of cloud uplifting
  In air their unsubstantial masonry.

THE POETS

O ye dead Poets, who are living still
  Immortal in your verse, though life be fled,
  And ye, O living Poets, who are dead
  Though ye are living, if neglect can kill,
Tell me if in the darkest hours of ill,
  With drops of anguish falling fast and red
  From the sharp crown of thorns upon your head,
  Ye were not glad your errand to fulfil? 
Yes; for the gift and ministry of Song
  Have something in them so divinely sweet,
  It can assuage the bitterness of wrong;
Not in the clamor of the crowded street,
  Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng,
  But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.

PARKER CLEAVELAND

WRITTEN ON REVISITING BRUNSWICK IN THE SUMMER OF 1875

Among the many lives that I have known,
  None I remember more serene and sweet,
  More rounded in itself and more complete,
  Than his, who lies beneath this funeral stone. 
These pines, that murmur in low monotone,
  These walks frequented by scholastic feet,
  Were all his world; but in this calm retreat
  For him the Teacher’s chair became a throne. 
With fond affection memory loves to dwell
  On the old days, when his example made
  A pastime of the toil of tongue and pen;
And now, amid the groves he loved so well
 That naught could lure him from their grateful shade,
 He sleeps, but wakes elsewhere, for God hath said, Amen!

THE HARVEST MOON

It is the Harvest Moon!  On gilded vanes
  And roofs of villages, on woodland crests
  And their aerial neighborhoods of nests
  Deserted, on the curtained window-panes
Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes
  And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests! 
  Gone are the birds that were our summer guests,
  With the last sheaves return the laboring wains! 
All things are symbols:  the external shows
  Of Nature have their image in the mind,
  As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves;
The song-birds leave us at the summer’s close,
  Only the empty nests are left behind,
  And pipings of the quail among the sheaves.