Poetry Archives

Sail fast, sail fast,
    Ark of my hopes, Ark of my dreams;
    Sweep lordly o’er the drowned Past,
    Fly glittering through the sun’s strange beams;
        Sail fast, sail fast.
Breaths of new buds from off some drying lea
With news about the Future scent the sea:
My brain is beating like the heart of Haste:
I’ll loose me a bird upon this Present waste;
        Go, trembling song,
    And stay not long; oh, stay not long:
    Thou’rt only a gray and sober dove,
    But thine eye is faith and thy wing is love.


Baltimore, 1878.