red paper boat

Strange phantoms taught
of that remorseless date
A tale that a mother
might sing to her babe

To anchor at last
in the Harbor of Dreams
A land of love
where memory sleeps.

Ulysses-like
from the misty deep,
While over the wake
the shadows sleep

Vision or dream, prophetic still
Of all the land wherein we dwell
Older hears are waiting
still

Pin-cushioned dolls
white with snow
Where are the wanderers
years ago?

Questions never fully answered
Cold comfort
for the weary head

Returning across the horizon blue
Is this the ship our fathers knew?

Moonlight floods
like liquid leaven
The stars in their courses
nearer heaven

No annal like this
through all history’s range
The warp and the woof
of the chronicle strange

O, how the Pleiades would stare
In one heart shall their melody share
For I played in my childhood there

Just the same forevermore,
On the moonlit rock
by the silent shore

Known to the living
voice of the deep
Say, whose was the spirit
embodied in thee?

Lost in the wild woods
—dark and deep—
Look at the same round moon
with me

Gliding o’er the glimmering sea
And all we dream or wish for thee
The birthday morn when thou art three
When the days are all the same to thee

Here upon the quivering margin
Every star in yonder welkin
To grace henceforth Time’s diadem

In the years that followed
when days were dark
Beneath such skies
what need of chart?

Dances on the silent sea
Phantom forms that flit and flee

Ever bubbling on in glee,
Radiant sky
a boundless sea

Floating shadows
almost blended,
The long discussion
silent
ended