GODS of the desert! you are they
We shun from childhood's earliest breath;
Our passing joys are but your prey;
You wait the hours from birth to death.

Over soft lawns where blossoms sleep,
Under warm trees where love was born,
I see your haughty shadows creep,
And wait to meet you there, forlorn.

Afar on ancient sands you rest,
Carven in stone, where ancient thought
Wrapt you in terrors, -- shapes unblest,
Dreadful, by might of ages wrought.

But not in Egypt's land alone
Sleeps the great desert; everywhere
Where gladness lived that now is done,
Behold a desert of despair!

Strange messengers! your brows of gloom
Haunt every creature born of earth;
You follow to the darkened room;
You watch the awful hour of birth.

You show the lovely wayside rose
Whose antique grace is born anew
To eyes of grief. Grief only knows
How tender is the sunset's hue.

Gods of the desert! by your hand
Through the sad waters are we brought
Into a high and peaceful land
To drink of fountains else unsought.

ON A WHARF

THE moonlight filled the waters and the strand;
The floating spires gleamed toward the starry land;
Pale Hero seemed upon her Sestian height
To stand with torch alight.

At anchor slept a heavy rounded keel
Whose moveless rudder made the senses wheel
To music dropping from the Antwerp bells
In fluctuating swells.

A distant sound blending with dripping oar,
I thought a voice, and then a voice no more,
Past the Armenian convent's solemn wall
Shot with swift rise and fall.

A stately barge moved on a stately river,
Bearing a queen from happy France forever
To Holyrood, the witness of her shame,
Her beauty and sad fame.

There stood two lovers over Spezzia's bay,
Silent, enamored of the watery way;
One must soon pass to meet the purple dark
Borne in yon treacherous bark.

Breathless I watch a noble vessel come
Tented with sail and happy as for home:
Forward she bounds, when swift the moonlit gleam
Disparts our shadowy dream.

I tread upon my native city's piers;
I see what hope, what loveliness are hers;
Her ships come sailing in unsullied light
From outer seas to-night.