Across the Sea and Other Poems | Page 3

me.
Why tarry ye, O men? the way is long
To yonder hazy Headland's
wave-worn base.
We wait in vain for favoring winds to blow,
'Tis
yours to pull the oars. Row, bravely, row,
Keep even stroke, ye merry
hearts, with song,
And lead the swift sea-birds a winning race.
The willing oarsmen heard the words, and bent
Them to the toil; but
"Knowledge" had not heard,
And still he dreamed upon his trailing
oar,
Until the barge had rounded to the shore
We scarce had left. In
vain the labor spent.
The old man smiled again. The swift sea-bird
Such rivalry would never fear, said he,
"Knowledge" must pull with
"Courage"; "Justice," too,
Must draw his stroke with "Patience," else
your barge,
Despite your strength, will never leave the marge,
But

still in weary revolutions be
A vanity of vanities to you.
These words to you in parting. O beware
In seeking heaven, lest you
despise the earth;
Heaven is both what we are and where we go,

And we are heaven-builders here below;
Alike we take it and we find
it there,
And heaven is worth to us what we are worth.
God hath the earth to heaven in marriage given,
See how the ocean
yieldeth tenderly
The penciled shadow of the morning bars

Whereon, like notes of music, rest the stars.
Ah! listen, for the azure
dome of heaven
Is echoing now the music of the sea.
Love wisely then the earth, and you shall love
The Holy City where
the angels dwell.
The gentle light of love will never bring
The
circling moth upon his dusty wing.
No thief will steal, no rust corrode
above,
Nor in your heart--if love be there. Farewell.
III.--MANHOOD.
So to their oars my boatmen, cheerily,
Bent once again, and then,
with steady stroke,
They drew upon the waters till the shore
Grew
lower in the distance, and no more
Thro' the gray mist the mentor I
could see,
But oft I thought upon the words he spoke.
And oft, O wise Experience, have I found
The lesson true you taught
to me that day.
_No progress but by toil, and there must be
In heart
and mind a vital unity._
Our days are else in vain, and ne'er will
bound
The "Barge of Time" upon the heavenly way.
But soon the ripple of an adverse tide,--
Whose darkling bitter waters
seemed to stay
The prow,--twined like a sea-weed growth the oars;

A tide that hies forever from the shores
I sought, and with its soft
caresses, wide
And far, bears hapless wanderers away.
Yet gallant are the boats that drift along;
Proud are the hearts that

float where flows the tide.
The youth whose heated fancy sees afar

The promise of ambition's streaming star,
And he who follows with a
careless song
Some godless passion he has deified.
The man of curling lip and brow of scorn,
The worshiper of reason
and of self,
The atheist, wanton, and the giddy maid,
The
faith-betrayer and the love-betrayed;
Self-righteous pharisees, who
would adorn
Or hide with pious garb their love of pelf.
The poet with a poem on his lip,
The writer with an essay in his heart,

The statesman with a law within his brain,
The merchant princes
busy with their gain;
Dreamers who reck not that their barges slip

Upon a tide from which so few may part.
Ah, tide that hurries to the Land of Fear,
The arms are feeble, and
perplexed the will,
And the hearts childish that must stem thy flow,

And it is sweet to rest, and hard to row.
I, too, have drifted on thy
waters drear,
And but for grace divine were drifting still.

Life's sea, at best, is but a lonely sea,
Yet thrice from angry winds and
waters rude
The mem'ry of their bitter feud has flown
On the soft
pinions of a gentle tone.
Thrice heavenly messengers have come to
me
To break the bondage of my solitude.
And first, my mother's love, warm, tender, true,
To guide me o'er the
billowy deep, was given;
E'en now I view her barge's silvery trail,

And faint, in distance, mark her snowy sail
Bloom like a lily on the
water blue.
'Tis but a mirage, she is long in heaven.
O how my heart has hungered for her smile,
When life has pressed
me with a weight of cares,
Yet I have thought, wherever I have been,

Some gentle power was leading me from sin
To virtue's sweeter,
nobler way the while.
It was the power, dear mother, of thy prayers.

One morning when, like Cana's Lord, the sun
Had changed the
waiting water into wine,
Sped o'er the rosy tide a seraph bright,

Within a craft of pearl and crystal light,
And still she sped until our
ways were one,
And I was hers, for aye, and she was mine.
Once, when my tears were falling on the wake
Which far and near my
wayward path betrayed,
Shone there upon me in that fateful hour,
A
Holy Being, clothed in light and power.
And with Him came th'
eternal morning's break.
How sweet His words, 'Tis I, be not afraid.
Thus to the soul of man there come alone
Three sacred ones upon the
Sea of Life;
All others are as distant sails that fly
Far from