Where the sea-maidens play,
Twining foam-garlands fair,
Girding their golden hair,
Clad in her moss-robe green
Veiled in her bright locks' sheen--
Where the dim seaweeds sway,
Trackless her white feet stray
All thro' the dreamy day
Under the sea.

Or like a star she glides
Over the sea,
Deftly her steeds she guides--
Gold-fish that glint and gleam,
Jewels alive they seem--
Softly the surges swell,
Rocking the rosy shell
Where the sea-maiden rides,
Wafture of wooing tides,
Swift as a star she glides
Over the sea.

One day she lifts her eyes
Up from the sea
Where the great sun-god flies
Over the world afar,
Guiding his golden car--
All his star brow aglow,
All his bright hair aflow;
Dawn in his radiance lies,
Dusk at his coming dies--
Hapless she lifts her eyes
Up from the sea.

Swiftly his steeds speed on
Over the sea,
Soon is the splendor flown,
Lone on the shore she stands.
Stretching imploring hands,
Lifting impassioned eyes
Where the last sun-gleam dies;
All the day's brightness gone,
Hapless she stands alone,
Heedless the god speeds on
Over the sea.

Ever her wistful gaze
Over the sea
Yearns on the sun-god's rays--
Till by some subtle power
Changed to a golden flower--
Still in her robe of green,
Crowned with her gold hair's sheen
Slight on her stem she sways ...
Yet does her yearning gaze
Follow the sun-god's rays
Over the sea.

In Bondage

What can it profit a man tho' he have the soul of a god
Sunk in the form of a beast, with a senseless simian face--
What can the world perceive of the subtler inward grace
Breathing upon the dust of the coarse clay clod?
What knows the world of me--the Me that is prisoned within--
Seeing only the self that sickens its sensitive eyes--
How can it know that this hateful mask hides not the sneer of Sin,
That this cloak of crass, crude flesh, is a trusty soul's disguise?

What can I hope to win? Which of the gifts men prize?
What can I have or hold of the bounteous boon I crave--
I, with the coarse stubbed hands, the dull and narrow eyes,
The low-browed leer of the brutal, base-born slave?
What can I know of Love? I, with my ape-like face,
Frighting the tender trust of the timorous, shrinking maid,
Who, drawn by my deep soul's spell, half-yields to the soul's embrace
Then looks on its hideous mask and trembles and flees dismayed.

Yet must the soul of fire ch