Theodore H. Rand

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HOPE

IN shadowy calm the boat

Sleeps by the dreaming oar,

The green hills are afloat

Beside the silver shore.

Youth hoists the white-winged sail,

Love takes the longing oar—

The oft-told fairy tale

Beside the silver shore.

Soft lip to lip, and heart

To heart, and hand to hand,

And wistful eyes depart

Unto another strand.

And lovely as a star

They tremble o'er the wave,

With eager wings afar,

Unto the joys they crave.

In a sweet trance they fare

Unto the wind and rain,

With wind-tossed waves of hair,

And ne'er return again.

And at the drifting side,

Changed faces in the deep

They see, a changing tide,

Like phantoms in a sleep.

Slow hands furl the torn sail

Without one silver-gleam,

And, sad and wan and pale,

They gaze into a dream.

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PALE melancholy, faithfully thou lov'st

The human soul when youth and passion fail;

How precious all things grow beneath thy smile!

Sad sister of the poet's lonely hours,

Thy clinging arms embrace us all, thy feet

Are in all paths, and Nature saddens 'neath

Thine eyes. The lotus and the poppy have

Thee in their dreamy veins; thine image dwells

For ever in the jewelled wine; thou art

The hungry beauty of Love's crescent eyes,

The tremor of white hands, the ashy gleam

Of noble brows, and thou dost startle Love's

Young dream into a dying swoon, and strew

A flowery sadness on some new-made grave.

I HEAR the wondrous lyre

Of the blind bard, and see the Grecian throng

About Troy's lofty walls, and Hector slain,

The white-stained face and blackened crest,

And great Achilles crumbling on his pyre.

Then comes Ulysses sighing for his home

Afar, leaving the ruins of old Troy

For Ithaca, where oft, a glad-faced boy,

He played amid the ripening vines and heard

His father's voice ere he began to roam

The weary waves. His heart is stirred

With thoughts of home, and son, and wife,

And ever Circe holds him in her arms.

How have I longed to drift on some fair isle,

Like thee, from feverish alarms,

And voices of reproach, and earth's vain strife—

Some urnless land beyond the wile

Of grief and gold, where man can quite forget

All pain, and sleep and dream not of regret.