Hast thou been known to sing,
        O sea, that knowest thy strength?
Hast thou been known to sing? 
        Thy voice, can it rejoice?
Naught save great sorrowing,
        To me, thy sounds incessant
Do express, naught save great sorrowing.
Thy lips, they daily kiss the sand,
        In wanton mockery.
Deep in thine awful heart
        Thou dost not love the land.
        Thou dost not love the land.
        O sea, that knowest thy strength.

“These sands, these listless, helpless,
        Sun-gold sands, I’ll play with these,
Or crush them in my white-fanged hands
        For leagues, to please
The thing in me that is the Sea,
        Intangible, untamed,
        Untamed and wild,
        And wild and weird and strong!”

Thou art not dead, although the spoiler’s hand
Lies heavy as death upon thee; though the wrath
Of its accursed might is in thy path
And has usurped thy children of their land;
Though yet the scourges of a monstrous band
Roam on thy ruined fields, thy trampled lanes,
Thy ravaged homes and desolated fanes;
Thou art not dead, but sleeping,—Motherland.

A mighty country, valorous and free,
Thou shalt outlive this terror and this pain;
Shall call thy scattered children back to thee,
Strong with the memory of their brothers slain;
And rise from out thy charnel house to be
Thine own immortal, brilliant self again!

Never, my heart, is there enough of living,
Since only in thee is loveliness so sweet pain;
Only for thee the willows will be giving
Their quiet fringes to the dreaming river;
Only for thee so the light grasses ever
Are hollowed by the print of windy feet,
And breathe hill weather on the misty plain;
And were no rapture of them in thy beat,
For every hour of sky
Stillborn in gladness would the waters wear
Colors of air translucently,
And the stars sleep there.

Gently, my heart, nor let one moment ever
Be spilled from the brief fullness of thine urn.
Plunge in its exultation star and star,
Sea and plumed sea in turn.
O still, my heart, nor spill this moment ever.

Not that I always struck the proper mean
Of what mankind must give for what they gain,
But, when I think of those whom dull routine
And the pursuit of cheerless toil enchain,
Who from their desk-chairs seeing a summer cloud
Race through blue heaven on its joyful course
Sigh sometimes for a life less cramped and bowed,
I think I might have done a great deal worse;
For I have ever gone untied and free,
The stars and my high thoughts for company;
Wet with the salt-spray and the mountain showers,
I have had the sense of space and amplitude,
And love in many places, silver-shoed,
Has come and scattered all my path with flowers.

Dawn slips within my room to say good-by: 
Buffeted, bruised, by autumn rain 
All night, 
While I lay sleeping, held to dreams, again 
She comes from out the violated sky, 
Dragging her tarnished light.

With dim leaves drooping, hanging all about 
Her misty face, her eyes still wet, 
She stands 
Disconsolate beneath her veils—and yet 
Bravely she spills one last bird’s note from out 
Her summer-empty hands.

They dip their wings in the sunset,

They dash against the air

As if to break themselves upon its stillness:

In every movement, too swift to count,

Is a revelry of indecision,

A furtive delight in trees they do not desire

And in grasses that shall not know their weight.

They hover and lean toward the meadow

With little edged cries;

And then,

As if frightened at the earth’s nearness,

They seek the high austerity of evening sky

And swirl into its depth.

The squall sweeps gray-winged across the obliterated hills,

And the startled lake seems to run before it;

From the wood comes a clamor of leaves,

Tugging at the twigs,

Pouring from the branches,

And suddenly the birds are still.

Thunder crumples the sky,

Lightning tears at it.

And now the rain!

The rain—thudding—implacable—

The wind, reveling in the confusion of great pines!

And a silver sifting of light,

A coolness;

A sense of summer anger passing,

Of summer gentleness creeping nearer—

Penitent, tearful,

Forgiven!

There is more glory in a drop of dew,
    That shineth only for an hour,
Than there is in the pomp of earth’s great Kings
    Within the noonday of their power.

There is more sweetness in a single strain
    That falleth from a wild bird’s throat,
At random in the lonely forest’s depths,
    Than there’s in all the songs that bards e’er wrote.

Yet men, for aye, rememb’ring Caesar’s name,
    Forget the glory in the dew,
And, praising Homer’s epic, let the lark’s
    Song fall unheeded from the blue.

A few days more, and then

There’ll be no secret glen,

Or hollow, deep and dim,

To hide or shelter him.

And on the prairie far,

Beneath the beacon star

On evening’s dark’ning shore,

I’ll hear him nevermore.

For where the tepee smoke

Curled up of yore, the stroke

Of hammers rings all day,

And grim Doom shouts, “Make way!”

The immemorial hush

Is broken by the rush

Of armed enemies

Unto the utmost seas.

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow:
You are not wrong who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand–
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep–while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?