A MOONLIT desert's yellow sands, Where, dimmer than its shadow, stands A motionless palm-tree here and there, And the great stars through amber air Burn calm as planets, and the face Of earth seems lifting into space: -- A tropic ocean's starlit rest, Along whose smooth and sleeping breast Slow swells just stir the mirrored gleams, Like faintest sighs in placid dreams; All overhead the night, so high And hollow that there seems no sky, But the unfathomed deeps, among The worlds down endless arches swung: -- On moonlit plain, and starlit sea, Is life's lost charm, tranquillity. A poet found it once, and took It home, and hid it in a book, As one might press a violet. There still the odor lingers yet. Delicious; from your treasured tomes Reach down your Wordsworth, and there comes That fragrance which no bard but he E'er caught, as if the plain and sea Had yielded their serenity. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...RIVALRY IN LOVE by WILLIAM WALSH (1663-1707) THE IDEAL GENERAL by ARCHILOCHUS THE ORIGIN OF SONG-WRITING by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD LE ROI EST MORT. VIVE LE ROI! by WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT A BOOK OF AIRS: SONG 37 by THOMAS CAMPION TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 3. AFTER THE DAY'S WORK by EDWARD CARPENTER |