Across the Sea and Other Poems

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Title: Across the Sea and Other Poems.
Author: Thomas S. Chard
Release Date: June 13, 2006 [EBook #18574]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
0. START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ACROSS THE
SEA AND OTHER POEMS. ***
Produced by The University of Michigan's Making of America
online
book collection (http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/moa/).
ACROSS THE SEA
And Other Poems.
By
Thomas S. Chard.
Now just as the gates were opened to let in the men, I looked in after
them,
and behold the City shone like the sun; the streets also were
paved with gold,
and in them walked many men, with crowns on their
heads,
palms in their hands, and golden harps to sing praises withal.

0. * * And after that they shut up the gates; which, when I had seen, I
wished myself among them.
--Pilgrim's Progress.
Chicago:
Jansen, McClurg & Company.
1875.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by
JANSEN, McCLURG & CO.,
In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
PREFACE.
The poem whose name gives title to this little volume, was published in
outline in the winter of 1869, and now appears for the first time as
completed. _The sea,_ as a picture of life, has been celebrated by the
poetic thought of all ages, and the author will therefore hardly hope to
offer much that is new in the following verses. His only excuse for so
worn a theme is, that the world still loves the picture, and that each
generation can, at best, but reset the old jewels of the past.
CONTENTS.
Across the Sea,
The Seven Sleepers,
A Legend of St. John,
The Blessed Vale.
ACROSS THE SEA.
Inscribed to

David Swing.
ACROSS THE SEA.
I.--CHILDHOOD.
Ah! who can speak that country whence I fled?
None but a lover may
its beauty know,
None but a poet can its rapture sing;
And e'en his
muse, upborne on Fancy's wing,
Will grieve o'er beauties still
unnoticed,
O'er raptures language is too poor to show.
Fore'er remains the land where children dwell,
Earth's fairest mem'ry
and its Palestine;
Tho' years have passed since on my forehead there

Were graven lines of weariness and care,
Still on the silver string
of memory oft I tell
The golden beads of joy that once were mine.
Dear distant Land of Childhood! God doth know
That I have longed
to dwell in thee again,
As when by care unvexed, by doubt undriven,

With eyes as blue, and heart as pure, as Heaven.
Sweet are the days
of childhood, glad the flow
Of unhurt joyous life in every vein.
It may not be, those sunny hours are flown,
And loud "The Fortune"
knocks at every gate;
Still move we on the path where none returns,

Where wait afar, or near, our funeral urns,
That mystic path, whose
ways are all unknown,
For only life's surprises make us great.
Yet still I dream, as o'er the swelling deep,
I gaze upon the far
enchanted shore,
Through whose retreats the memory-brooding sea

Rolls in deep monotone continually.
Waves of soft melody, which
fall asleep
In rosy glens that I may see no more.
O holy music of the flowing sea,
Heard never but at eve, when shifts
and gleams
On waves afar the light of joy still ours,
Because
remembered still, thy voice o'erpowers
My soul with pensiveness,
sweet reverie
And memory of half-forgotten dreams.

Twas early, Sea of Life, I loved thee well,
And mused betimes upon
thy strand, till rolled
Ashore from Daylight's wreck her gilded spars,

And Night, in thee, a chandelier of stars
Had hung, to light the
grots where mermen dwell,
The deep-sea grots of amethyst and gold.
Beyond thee, when thou wert of gentle mood,
And held with all the
weary winds a truce,
Upon the other shore I could descry
Where,
faintly outlined in the western sky,
A mystic rainbow-girdled
Headland stood,
Whose silver sandals thou dost rise to loose.
Far on the verge, where sky and waters meet,
The Headland's hazy
outline I could trace;
High in the blue of Heaven its summit lay;

There sleeps the twilight, till the crystal Day,
Waked by the song of
birds from slumber sweet,
Beams on the Headland fair with lovelit
face.
For I have ne'er believed the Headland's brow
Is bathed forever in the
noon-day glare;
Dearer to me the quiet hour of eve,
And when at
last this passion world I leave,
May I, sometimes, behold the stars, as
now,--
In the sweet gloaming--tho' "no night is there."
One early morn, ere earth had waked from sleep,
From the calm
shadow of my tent I stole;
I could not rest, and as I sought the shore,

To tell my longings to