POETRY.
THE KNIGHT ERRANT. LA.DY, I know your gaze is bent Across a listening continent To where your sky-line far and pale Expects the lifting of my sail Out of the world it shuts from view— The sky-line between me and you!
0 Lady, Lady of my dreams, O'er windy hills and tangled streams You watch until my ship shall ride The front of the arriving tide; You watch until the shore shall feel The shock of my expected keel.
You know how tall the plume that I Shall shake against the morning sky, How bright my sword and lance ; you know The very road that I must go, Whereon my horse's hoofs in fire Shall beat the tune of my desire. • So do your eyes expect me still To top the summit of the bill; So are your ears prepared to note My trumpet blown beyond the moat; So do your heart and soul await My hand in summons at your gate.
Because of this the dawns arise For me into enchanted skies, And twilight knits a trembling space About the shadows of your face, And all the hours of darkness are Made vast with you as with a star.
And thus for you the dusk is tense With music of mine imminence. And shifting shafts of noon define The journey that shall yet be mine, And dimly through the starlit air Mine eyes confront you unaware. Lo! in this service year by year My heart sets to you as a spear Sets to the battle's central roar, Or as the tide turns to the shore, Or as the wind yearns to be free, Or as Orion seeks the sea.
Lo! I shall come: the years are cast Vaguely into the vacant Past Like stones into a well; a smile Is lovely on your lips the while, And still your eyes unsleeping keep The secret of the wells of sleep.
You see no novel thing nor strange, You change not with the moons that change ; The blowing and the fading flowers Return upon the unreckoned hours ; The wandering seas that win and lose Neither reward you nor refuse.
But ah ! the meeting when at last Those hindering seas are overpassed, And the coiled continents unfold
My silver spear and plume of gold—
When streams are crossed and gates flung wide, And the long quest is satisfied!
GERALD GOULD.
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