Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art—
   Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
   Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
   Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
   Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
   Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
   Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

Great forests, you alarm me like a mighty fane; 
Like organ-tones you roar, and in our hearts of stone, 
Where ancient sobs vibrate, O halls of endless pain! 
The answering echoes of your “De Profundis” moan.

I hate thee, Ocean! hate thy tumults and thy throbs, 
My spirit finds them in himself. This bitter glee 
Of vanquished mortals, full of insults and of sobs, 
I hear it in the mighteous laughter of the sea.

O starless night! thy loveliness my soul inhales, 
Without those starry rays which speak a language known, 
For I desire the dark, the naked and the lone.

But e’en those darknesses themselves to me are veils, 
Where live—and, by the millions ’neath my eyelids prance, 
Long, long departed Beings with familiar glance.

Before man came to blow it right
    The wind once blew itself untaught,
And did its loudest day and night
    In any rough place where it caught.

Man came to tell it what was wrong:
    It hadn’t found the place to blow;
It blew too hard—the aim was song.
    And listen—how it ought to go!

He took a little in his mouth,
    And held it long enough for north
To be converted into south,
    And then by measure blew it forth.

By measure. It was word and note,
    The wind the wind had meant to be—
A little through the lips and throat.
    The aim was song—the wind could see.