Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/620

 604 HORACE RUBLEE. [1850-60. Does Tz-uth make fully known ; "Who would her perfect loveliness be shown, His fixed design must bear, unmoved in calm or storm. Go, then, and from the wells Of ancient lore — from bards and sages old, And from the chronicles Of deeds heroic, gather potent spells Such as shall nerve thy soul to action high and bold. LONGINGS. I LONG for some intenser life, Some wilder joy, some sterner strife ! A dull slow stream, whose waters pass Through weary wastes of drear morass, Through reptile-breeding levels low — A sluggish ooze, and not a flow — Choked up with fat and slimy weeds, The current of my life proceeds. Once more to meet the advancing sun, Earth puts her bridal glories on ; Once more beneath the summer moons, The whippowil her song attunes ; Once more the elements are rife With countless forms of teeming hfe ; Life fills the air and fills the deeps ; Life from the quickened clod up-leaps ; But all too feeble is the ray That glances on our northern day ; And man, beneath its faint impress. Grows sordid, cold, and passionless. I long to greet those ardent climes. Where the sun's burning heat sublimes All forms of being, and imparts Its fervor even to human heai-ts ; To see up^towering, grand and calm, The king of trees, the lordly palm. And, when night darkens through the skies, Watch the sti'ange constellations rise : The floral pomps, the fruits of gold, The fiery life I would behold ; The swart warm beauties, luscious-lipped. With hearts in passion's lava dipped ; Nature's excess and overgrowth ; The light and splendor of the South ! Or, if it be my lot to bear This pulseless life, this blank despair, Waft me, ye winds, unto those isles Round which the far Pacific smiles ; Where, through the sun-bright atmosphere. Their purple peaks the mountains rear ; Where Earth is garmented in fight. And with unfading Spring is bright. Then, if my life must be a dream, Without a plan, without a scheme, From purpose as from action free, A dream of beauty it shall be. DREAM-FACES. The faces that we see in dreams Are radiant, as if with gleams From some diviner world than this: A sweeter, sadder tenderness Darkens the depths of loving eyes : A more seraphic beauty lies On lip and brow, than ever yet The gaze of waking mortal met. O blessed mystery of sleep! That can recall from out the deep Of vanished years, and from the tomb, The loved and lost to life and bloom : That makes each memory a bright Reality, and fills the night With gladness and sweet thoughts that stay Like lingering perfume through the day.