Page:The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, Gilder, 1908.djvu/101

 PART I

ODE

I

the spirit of the morning sea;

I am the awakening and the glad surprise;

I fill the skies

With laughter and with light.

Not tears, but jollity

At birth of day brim the strong man-child's eyes.

Behold the white

Wide threefold beams that from the hidden sun

Rise swift and far—

One where Orion keeps

His armèd watch, and one

That to the midmost starry heaven upleaps;

The third blots out the firm-fixt Northern Star.

I am the wind that shakes the glittering wave,

Hurries the snowy spume along the shore

And dies at last in some far, murmuring cave.

My voice thou hearest in the breaker's roar—

That sound which never failed since time began,

And first around the world the shining tumult ran.

II

I light the sea and wake the sleeping land.

My footsteps on the hills make music, and my hand

Plays like a harper's on the wind-swept pines.