DEATH UNDREADED

DEATH stands above me, whispering low
I know not what into my ear:
Of his strange language all I know
Is, there is not a word of fear.

MEMORY

THE Mother of the Muses, we are taught, Is Memory she has left me; they remain, And shake my shoulder, urging me to sing About the summer days, my loves of old. Alas! alas! is all I can reply.

Memory has left with me that name alone, Harmonious name, which other bards may sing,

But her bright image in my darkest hour Comes back, in vain comes back, call'd or uncall'd.

Forgotten are the names of visitors
Ready to press my hand but yesterday ;
Forgotten are the names of earlier friends
Whose genial converse and glad counte-

THE SEA

THE sea! the sea! the open sea!
The blue, the fresh, the ever free!
Without a mark, without a bound,

It runneth the earth's wide regions round;
It plays with the clouds ; it mocks the skies;
Or like a cradled creature lies.

I'm on the sea! I'm on the sea!
I am where I would ever be;
With the blue above, and the blue below,
And silence wheresoe'er I go;

If a storm should come and awake the deep,
What matter? I shall ride and sleep.

I love, O, how I love to ride
On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide,
When every mad wave drowns the moon
Or whistles aloft his tempest tune,
And tells how goeth the world below,
And why the sou'west blasts do blow.

I never was on the dull, tame shore,
But I lov'd the great sea more and more,
And backwards flew to her billowy breast,
Like a bird that seeketh its mother's nest ;
And a mother she was, and is, to me;
For I was born on the open sea!

The waves were white, and red the morn,
In the noisy hour when I was born;
And the whale it whistled, the porpoise
roll'd,

And the dolphins bared their backs of gold;
And never was heard such an outery wild
As welcom'd to life the ocean-child!