There is no other ship among the stars than this.
The wind of death is a bright kiss
Upon the lips
Of every immigrant, as upon yours and mine--
Theirs is the stinging brine
And sun and open sea,
And theirs the arching sky, eternity."
And Celia had my homage. I was wrong.
Immigrants all, one ship we ride,
Man and his bride
The journey through.
O let it be with a bridal-song!...
"My shipmates are as many as eternity is long:
The unborn and the living and the dead--
And, Celia, you!"

III

That midnight when the moon was tall
I walked alone by the white lake--yet with a vanished race
And with a race to come. To walk with dead men is to pray,
To walk with men unborn--to find the way.

I have seen many days. That night I watched them all.
I have seen many a sign and trace
Of beauty and of hope:
An elm at night; an arrowy waterfall;
The illimitable round unbroken scope
Of life; a friend's unfrightened dying face.

Though I have heard the cry of fear in crowded loneliness of space,
Dead laughter from the lips of lust,
Anger from fools, falsehood from sycophants,
(My fear, my lips, my anger, my disgrace)
Though I have held a golden cup and tasted rust,
Seen cities rush to be defiled
By the bright-fevered and consuming sin
Of making only coin and lives to count it in,
Yet once I watched with Celia,
Watched on a ferry an Italian child,
One whom America
Had changed.
His cheek was hardy and his mouth was frail
For sweetness, and his eyes were opening wild
As with wonder at an unseen figure carrying a grail.
Perhaps he faced, as I did in his glance,
The spirit of the living dead who, having ranged
Through long reverses, forward without fail
Carry deliverance
From privilege and disinheritance,
Until their universal soul shall prove
The only answer to the ache of love.

"America was wistful in that child,"
Said Celia afterwards--and smiled
Because all three of us were immigrants,
Each voyaging into each.
Over the city-roofs, the sun awoke
Bright in the dew
Of a marvellous morning, while she spoke
Of the sun, the dew, the wonder, in a child:
"He who devises tyranny," she said,
"Denies the resurrection of the dead,
Beneath his own degree degrades himself,
Invades himself with ugliness and wars.
But he who knows all men to be himself,
Part of his own experiment and reach,