Implora Pace

No more Joy-roses ! their perfume
To this dull pain brings short surcease :
But tell me, if ye know, where bloom
The golden lily-bells of Peace.

Leap, winnowing all the air of light,
Ye wild wraiths of the waterfall!
But for that fabled fountain’s sight,
That giveth sleep, I’d give you all.

Bound, gay barks, o’er the bounding main !
Shake all your white wings to the breeze !
My joy was erst the hurricane,
The plunging of the purple seas;

My hope to find the mystic marge
Of all strange lands, the strange world o'er:
But bear me now to yon still barge,
Calm cradled by a tideless shore!

Wild birds, that cleave the crystal deeps
With May-time matins loud and long,
Oh, not for you my sick heart weeps !
Its pulses time not to your song !

But know ye where she hides her nest,
Beneath what balmy dropping eaves,
The Dove that bears on her white breast
The sacred green of olive-leaves ?

Not when the Spring doth rosy rise
From white foam of the Northern snows ;
Not when ’neath passion-throbbing skies
The fire-pulsed June in beauty glows:

But when amid the templed hills,
Deep drained from every purple vine,
Soft for her dying lips distils
The Summer’s sacramental wine ;

While all her woodland priests put on
Their vestures dipped in sacrifice,
And, as ’twere golden bells far swung,
A rhythmic silence holds the skies;

What time the Day-spring softlv wells
From Night’s dark caverns, till it sets
In long, melodious, tidal swells,
Toward the wide flood-gates of the West; —

Oh, open then my dungeon door !
Let Nature lead me, blind of eyes,
If haply I may feel once more
The pillars of the steadfast skies ;

If haply there may fall for me
Some strange assurance in my fears,—
As he who heard on Galilee,
That stormy night in wondrous years,

The “ It is I,” and o’er the foam
Of what seemed phantom-haunted seas,
Saw glory of the kingdom come,
The footsteps of the Prince of Peace !