95 Till her finger nigh felt of the bairnie's faceIn a flash fierce Hamish turned round and lifted the child in the air,

And sprang with the child in his arms from the horrible height in the sea,

Still screeching, "Revenge!" in the wind-rush; and pallid Maclean,

Age-feeble with anger and impotent pain,

100 Crawled up on the crag, and lay flat, and locked hold of dead roots of a tree—

And gazed hungrily o'er, and the blood from his back drip-dripped in the brine,

And a sea-hawk flung down a skeleton fish as he

flew,

And the mother stared white on the waste of

blue,

And the wind drove a cloud to seaward, and the sun began to shine.

BALTIMORE, 1878.

A SONG OF THE FUTURE

SAIL fast, sail fast

Ark of my hopes, Ark of my dreams;
Sweep lordly o'er the drowned Past,

Fly glittering through the sun's strange beams;
Sail fast, sail fast.

Breaths of new buds from off some drying lea

With news about the Future scent the sea:

My brain is beating like the heart of Haste:
I'll loose me a bird upon this Present waste;
Go, trembling song,

And stay not long; oh, stay not long:
Thou'rt only a gray and sober dove,
But thine eye is faith and thy wing is love.
BALTIMORE, 1878.

10

THE MARSHES OF GLYNN

GLOOMS of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and

woven

With intricate shades of the vines that myriadcloven

Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs,

Emerald twilights,

Virginal shy lights,

Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of

Vows,

When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades

Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods,
Of the heavenly woods and glades,

That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within 10
The wide sea-marshes of Glynn;-

Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon-day fire,—
Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire,
Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras
of leaves,-

15 Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves,

Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood,

Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good;

O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the vine,

While the riotous noon-day sun of the June-day long did shine

20 Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you fast in

mine;

But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest, And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West,

And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth

seem

Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream,25 Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak,

And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke

Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low,

And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I

know,

And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass

within,

30 That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn

Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought

me of yore

When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore,

And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain

Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain,

Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face

The vast sweet visage of space.

To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn, Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn,

For a mete and a mark

To the forest-dark:

So:

Affable live-oak, leaning low,

Thus with your favor-soft, with a reverent hand, (Not lightly touching your person, Lord of the land!)

Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand
On the firm-packed sand,

Free

By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea.

Sinuous southward and sinuous northward the shimmering band

Of the sand-beach fastens the fringe of the marsh to the folds of the land.

Inward and outward to northward and southward the beach-lines linger and curl

As a silver-wrought garment that clings to and follows the firm sweet limbs of a girl.

35

40

45

50

Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight,

Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim gray looping of light.

55 And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high?

The world lies east: how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky!

A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high, broad in the blade,

Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade,

Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain, 60 To the terminal blue of the main.

Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?

Somehow my soul seems suddenly free

From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,

By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn.

65 Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothingwithholding and free

Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!

Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,

Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won