Or Mary, with the Christ of Nazareth

Held close in her caress,

Whose pilgrimage of hope and love and faith

Illumed the wilderness;

Or anchorites beneath Engaddi's palms

Pacing the Dead Sea beach,

And singing slow their old Armenian psalms
In half-articulate speech;

Or caravans, that from Bassora's gate
With westward steps depart;

Or Mecca's pilgrims, confident of Fate,
And resolute in heart!

These have passed over it, or may have passed! Now in this crystal tower

Imprisoned by some curious hand at last,

It counts the passing hour.

And as I gaze, these narrow walls expand;
Before my dreamy eye

Stretches the desert with its shifting sand,

Its unimpeded sky.

And borne aloft by the sustaining blast,

This little golden thread

Dilates into a column high and vast,

A form of fear and dread.

And onward, and across the setting sun,
Across the boundless plain,

The column and its broader shadow run,

Till thought pursues in vain.

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30

35

40

The vision vanishes! These walls again
Shut out the lurid sun,

Shut out the hot, immeasurable plain;
The half-hour's sand is run!

THE SECRET OF THE SEA

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Ah! what pleasant visions haunt me
As I gaze upon the sea!
All the old romantic legends,

All my dreams come back to me.
Sails of silk and ropes of sendal,

Such as gleam in ancient lore ; And the singing of the sailors,

And the answer from the shore !

Most of all, the Spanish ballad

Haunts me oft, and tarries long,
Of the noble Count Arnaldos

And the sailor's mystic song.
Like the long waves on a sea-beach,
Where the sand as silver shines,
With a soft, monotonous cadence,

Flow its unrhymed lyric lines;-
Telling how the Count Arnaldos,

With his hawk upon his hand, Saw a fair and stately galley,

Steering onward to the land;

How he heard the ancient helmsman

Chant a song so wild and clear, That the sailing sea-bird slowly

Poised upon the mast to hear,

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5

IO

15

20

"Wouldst thou," so the helmsman answered,

"Learn the secret of the sea?

Only those who brave its dangers
Comprehend its mystery!"

In each sail that skims the horizon,

In each landward-blowing breeze,

I behold that stately galley,

Hear those mournful melodies;

Till my soul is full of longing

For the secret of the sea,

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And the heart of the great ocean

Sends a thrilling pulse through me.

40

THE VOYAGE OF MAELDUNE

(FOUNDED ON AN IRISH LEGEND A.D. 700)

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

I

I was the chief of the race he had stricken my father

dead

But I gather'd my fellows together, I swore I would strike off his head.

Each of them look'd like a king, and was noble in birth as

in worth,

And each of them boasted he sprang from the oldest race upon earth.

1. What earlier poem in the book has the same metre?

Each was as brave in the fight as the bravest hero of song, And each of them liefer had died than have done one another a wrong.

He lived on an isle in the ocean. we sail'd on a Friday

He that had slain my father the day before I was born.

II

And we came to the isle in the ocean, and there on the shore was he.

But a sudden blast blew us out and away thro' a boundless

sea.

III

ΙΟ

And we came to the Silent Isle that we never had touch'd at before,

Where a silent ocean always broke on a silent shore,

And the brooks glitter'd on in the light without sound, and the long waterfalls

Pour'd in a thunderless plunge to the base of the mountain walls,

And the poplar and cypress unshaken by storm flourish'd up beyond sight,

15

And the pine shot aloft from the crag to an unbelievable

height,

And high in the heaven above it there flicker'd a songless

lark,

And the cock couldn't crow, and the bull couldn't low, and the dog couldn't bark.

And round it we went, and thro' it, but never a murmur, a

breath

It was all of it fair as life, it was all of it quiet as death,

20

8-10. Why is this stanza so short? 18. Is this line longer than its neighbors? Note the medial rhyme.

And we hated the beautiful Isle, for whenever we strove to

speak

Our voices were thinner and fainter than any flittermouse

shriek ;

And the men that were mighty of tongue and could raise such a battle-cry

That a hundred who heard it would rush on a thousand lances and die—

O they to be dumb'd by the charm! so fluster'd with anger were they

They almost fell on each other; but after we sail'd away.

IV

25

And we came to the Isle of Shouting, we landed, a score of wild birds

Cried from the topmost summit with human voices and

words;

Once in an hour they cried, and whenever their voices

peal'd

The steer fell down at the plough and the harvest died from the field,

30

And the men dropt dead in the valleys and half of the cattle

went lame,

And the roof sank in on the hearth, and the dwelling broke into flame;

And the shouting of these wild birds ran into the hearts of my crew,

Till they shouted along with the shouting and seized one another and slew;

But I drew them the one from the other; I saw that we

could not stay,

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And we left the dead to the birds and we sail'd with our

wounded away.

22. flittermouse, bat.