Page:Songs from the Southern Seas and Other Poems (1873).djvu/15

Nor gold nor silver are the words set here,
Nor rich-wrought chasing on design of art;
But rugged relics of an unknown sphere
"Where fortune chanced I played one time apart.
I say not this to pity move, or praise,—
This little, faulty book is all my own.
In which I've writ of men and things and ways
Uncouth and rough as Austral ironstone.

It may be, I have left the higher gleams
Of shies and flowers unheeded or forgot,
It may be so,—but, looking back, it seems
When I was with them I beheld them not.
I was no rambling poet, but a man
Hard-pressed to dig and delve, with naught of ease
The hot day through, save when the evening's fan
Of sea-winds rustled through the kindly trees.

It may be so; but when I think I smile
At my poor hand and brain to paint the charms
Of God's first-blazoned canvas! here the aisle
Moonlit and deep of reaching gothic arms