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...HE HAD HIS DREAM by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR THE SONG OF HIAWATHA: HIAWATHA AND MUDJEKEEWIS by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW THE MARYLAND BATTALION [AUGUST 27, 1776] by JOHN WILLIAMSON PALMER PERPLEXITY by LAWRENCE ALMA-TADEMA THE VIOLINIST by MARGARET STEELE ANDERSON THE REASON by LEONARD BACON (1887-1954) JACK FROST AND THE CATY-DID by JOHN GARDINER CALKINS BRAINARD |