Gilds and makes brave this sombreing tide of time.
Far be the hour when lesser brows shall wear
The laurel glorious from that wintry hair--
When he, the sovereign of our lyric day,
In Charon's shallop must be rowed away,
And hear, scarce heeding, 'mid the plash of oar,
The _ave atque vale_ from the shore!

To him nor tender nor heroic muse
Did her divine confederacy refuse:
To all its moods the lyre of life he strung,
And notes of death fell deathless from his tongue.
Himself the Merlin of his magic strain,
He bade old glories break in gloom again;
And so exempted from oblivious doom,
Through him these days shall fadeless break in bloom.

SONG

Lightly we met in the morn,
Lightly we parted at eve.
There was never a thought of the thorn
The rose of a day might leave.

Fate's finger we did not perceive,
So lightly we met in the morn!
So lightly we parted at eve
We knew not that Love was born.

I rose on the morrow forlorn,
To pine and remember and grieve.
Too lightly we met in the morn!
Too lightly we parted at eve!

COLUMBUS

(12TH OCTOBER 1492)

From his adventurous prime
He dreamed the dream sublime:
Over his wandering youth
It hung, a beckoning star.
At last the vision fled,
And left him in its stead
The scarce sublimer truth,
The world he found afar.

The scattered isles that stand
Warding the mightier land
Yielded their maidenhood
To his imperious prow.
The mainland within call
Lay vast and virginal:
In its blue porch he stood:
No more did fate allow.

No more! but ah, how much,
To be the first to touch
The veriest azure hem
Of that majestic robe!
Lord of the lordly sea,
Earth's mightiest sailor he:
Great Captain among them,
The captors of the globe.

When shall the world forget
Thy glory and our debt,
Indomitable soul,
Immortal Genoese?
Not while the shrewd salt gale
Whines amid shroud and sail,
Above the rhythmic roll
And thunder of the seas.

THE PRINCE'S QUEST
AND OTHER POEMS

THE PRINCE'S QUEST

PART THE FIRST

There was a time, it passeth me to say
How long ago, but sure 'twas many a day
Before the world had gotten her such store
Of foolish wisdom as she hath,--before
She fell to waxing gray with weight of years
And knowledge, bitter knowledge, bought with tears,--
When it did seem as if the feet of time
Moved to the music of a golden rhyme,
And never one false thread might woven be