First Lines of Bayard Taylor
Along the east, where late the dark impended,Blow, winds of midnight, blow!Born in the purple! born in the purple!Dear Love, whatever fateFor days before, the wild-dove cooed for rain.From you and home I sleep afar,
Give us a song!the soldiers cried,Have I passed through Death's unconscious birth,He was a boy when first we met;Heavy, and hot, and gray,I read that story of the Saxon knight,I sit on the lonely headland,If Love should come again, I ask my heartIf seed was meant to grow, or buds to swellIf thou hadst died at midnight,In clay the statue stood complete,It was our wedding-dayIt was the evening of the second day,Last night the Tempter came to me, and said:Like one who leaves the trampled streetListen, ye mariners! hark to our promises!Not as in youth, with steps outspeeding morn,Not Minos, iron judge, alone shall speakNow the night is overpast,O, Tongues of the Past, be still!One thought sits brooding in my bosom,Paler, and yet a thousand times more fairShe came, long absent from my side,She is a woman: therefore, I a man,She, pacing down the vineyard walks,'T is not the dropping of the flower,The April sky with sunshine filled the street,The beech is bare, and bare the ash,The fateful hour, when Death stood byThe fisherman wades in the surges;The gray stems rise, the branches braidThe headlands pale, the long, far-pointing cliffsThe thread I held has slipped from out my hand:The valley stream is frozen,The waters of my life were sweet,They are rough with the salt of the sea,Thus came the Poet's Journal to an end.We are not old, we are not cold,We fools! that meekly take the bitWhen May, with cowslip-braided locks,When the maple turns to crimsonWithin my heart 't is clear at last:You have toiled enough, mariners!You sit serene upon your golden seats,