With the wind and the day
I follow round the world—away! away!
Wide over lake and plain my sunlight shines
And every wave and every blade of grass
Doth know me as I pass;
And me the western sloping mountains know, and me
The far-off, golden sea.
O sea, whereon the passing sun doth lie!
O man, who watchest by that golden sea!
Grieve not, O, grieve not thou, but lift thine eye
And see me glorious in the sunset sky!
III
I love not the night
Save when the stars are bright,
Or when the moon
Fills the white air with silence like a tune.
Yea, even the night is mine
When the Northern Lights outshine,
And all the wild heavens throb in ecstasy divine;—
Yea, mine deep midnight, tho' the black sky lowers,
When the sea burns white and breaks on the shore in starry showers.
IV
I am the laughter of the new-born child
On whose soft-breathing sleep an angel smiled.
And I all sweet first things that are:
First songs of birds, not perfect as at last,—
Broken and incomplete,—
But sweet, O, sweet!
And I the first faint glimmer of a star
To the wreckt ship that tells the storm is past;
