And over its crown you will see arise,
Against a background of slaty skies,
A row of pillars still and white,
That glimmer, and then are out of
sight,

As if the moon should suddenly kiss,
While you crossed the gusty desert

by night,

The long colonnades of Persepolis; Look southward for White Island light, The lantern stands ninety feet o'er the tide ;

There is first a half-mile of tumult and fight,

Of dash and roar and tumble and fright, And surging bewilderment wild and wide,

Where the breakers struggle left and right,

Then a mile or more of rushing sea, And then the light-house slim and lone; And whenever the weight of ocean is thrown

Full and fair on White Island head,
A great mist-jotun you will see
Lifting himself up silently

High and huge o'er the light-house top, With hands of wavering spray outspread,

Groping after the little tower,

That seems to shrink and shorten and cower,

Till the monster's arms of a sudden drop,

And silently and fruitlessly
He sinks again into the sea.

'T is the sight of a lifetime to behold The great shorn sun as you see it now, Across eight miles of undulant gold That widens landward, weltered and rolled,

With freaks of shadow and crimson stains;

To see the solid mountain brow As it notches the disk, and gains and gains

Until there comes, you scarce know when,

A tremble of fire o'er the parted lips Of cloud and mountain, which vanishes. then

From the body of day the sun-soul slips

And the face of earth darkens; but noy the strips

Of western vapor, straight and thin, From which the horizon's swervings win

A grace of contrast, take fire and burn Like splinters of touchwood, whose edges a mould

Of ashes o'erfeathers; northward turn For an instant, and let your eye grow cold

On Agamenticus, and when once more You look, 't is as if the land-breeze, growing,

From the smouldering brands the film were blowing,

And brightening them down to the very

Of that long cloud-bar in the West,
Whose nether edge, erelong, you see
The silvery chrism in turn anoint,
And then the tiniest rosy point
Touched doubtfully and timidly
Into the dark blue's chilly strip,
As some mute, wondering thing below,
Awakened by the thrilling glow,
Might, looking up, see Dian dip
One lucent foot's delaying tip
In Latmian fountains long ago.

Knew you what silence was before?
Here is no startle of dreaming bird
That sings in his sleep, or strives to sing;
Here is no sough of branches stirred,
Nor noise of any living thing,
Such as one hears by night on shore ;
Only, now and then, a sigh,
With fickle intervals between,
Sometimes far, and sometimes nigh,
Such as Andromeda might have heard,
And fancied the huge sea-beast unseen
Turning in sleep; it is the sea
That welters and wavers uneasily
Round the lonely reefs of Appledore.

The bird to his deserted home
Sings not,
—" We meet again !"

The loath gate swings with rusty σeak;
Once, parting there, we played at

pain: There came a parting, when the weak And fading lips essayed to speal Vainly, "We meet again!

Somewhere is comfort, somewher faith, Though thou in outer dark renain; One sweet sad voice ennobles death, And still, for eighteen centuriessaith Softly, Ye meet again!"

If earth another grave must ber,

Yet heaven hath won a sweete strain, And something whispers my despair, That, from an orient chamber there, Floats down, "We meet agan !

AFTER THE BURIAL.

YES, faith is a goodly anchor;
When skies are sweet as a psal,
At the bows it lolls so stalwart
In bluff, broad-shouldered caln.
And when over breakers to leward
The tattered surges are hurlec,
It may keep our head to the tempest,
With its grip on the base of the world

But, after the shipwreck, tell ne
What help in its iron thews,
Still true to the broken hawse",
Deep down among sea-weed and ooze?

PINE in the distance,
Patient through sun or rain,
Meeting with graceful persistence,
With yielding but rooted resistance,
The northwind's wrench and strain,
No memory of past existence
Brings thee pain;

Right for the zenith heading,
Friendly with heat or cold,

Thine arms to the influence spreading
Of the heavens, just from of old,
Thou only aspirest the more,
Unregretful the old leaves shedding
That fringed thee with music before,
And deeper thy roots embedding
In the grace and the beauty of yore;
Thou sigh'st not, "Alas, I am older,
The green of last summer is sear!
But loftier, hopefuller, bolder,
Wins broader horizons each year.

Of waves on the shore
A shattered vessel flinging.

As thou musest still of the ocean
On which thou must float at last,
And seem'st to foreknow
The shipwreck's woe

And the sailor wrenched from the broken mast,

Do I, in this vague emotion,
This sadness that will not pass,
Though the air throbs with wings,
And the field laughs and sings,
Do I forebode, alas!

The ship-building longer and wearier,
The voyage's struggle and strife,
And then the darker and drearier
Wreck of a broken life?

THE VOYAGE TO VINLAND

I.

BIÖRN'S BECKONERS.

Now Biörn, the son of Heriulf, had ill

days

Because the heart within him seethed

with blood

That would not be allayed with any

toil,

Whether of war or hunting or the oar, But was anhungered for some joy un

tried:

For the brain grew not weary with the limbs,

But, while they slept, still hammered like a Troll,

Building all night a bridge of solid dream

Between him and some purpose of his

soul,

Or will to find a purpose. With the

dawn