splendid days:
The curving prow, the tall and stately mast,
And all the width and wonder of their ways,
Reduced to little printed words, at last;
The _Helen Dover_ docks, the _Mary Ann_
Departs for Ceylon and the Eastern trade;
Arrived: _The Queen_, with cargoes from Japan,
And _Richard Kidd_, a tramp, and _Silver Maid_.

The narrow print is wide enough for these:
But here: "Reported missing" ... the type fails,
The column breaks for white and angry seas,
The jagged spars thrust through, and flapping sails
Flagging farewells to wind and sky and shore,
Arrive at silent ports, and leave no more.

ARTICULATION

With what bright symbols have we learned, at last,
To write the epic of the tender Springs!--
We, who were dumb so many centuries past,
Who found no word for frail and lovely things.
In tongue-tied wonder at the blossoming earth,
We watched the trailing seasons loiter by,
Too inarticulate of their transient worth,
Beyond the saddened utterance of a sigh.

What Aprils taught us, children at the knee,
Word by slow word, the language April knows!
What Summers broke that brooding reverie,
Through patient iterations of the rose!--
Ah, dearest tutors of our lisping-time,
Today we bring you of our brightest rhyme.

MOONFLOWERS

These frail, white blooms have lit the Summer night
Like ghosts of beauty that had gone too soon,--
With something less than any glimmering light
That sways and faints and trembles in the moon.
I think the Earth, grown half-regretful, now,
Of faces that were lovely of old time,
Lifts here again dim hands and hair and brow,
In loveliness more fragile than a rhyme.

So that the listening night has somehow learned
A way of prescient waiting through the dark,
For half-forgotten loveliness returned,--
Too frail and dim for eyes like ours to mark
More than a ghostly glimmer on the air,
That once was lighted brows and hands and hair.

CHALLENGE

The Spring has crowned the startled grass with light,
And lit each apple-tree with blooms of May,
Her footprints flowering through the silent night,
Show where she went her hurried, careless way ...
A magic that awakens and goes by,
Too care-free to be bound, too fickle-fleet,
Leaves helpless legions staring at the sky,
Confronte