The note of alms, whose golden speech outrung The golden gift within it. But all in vain the enchanter's wand we wave: No stroke of ours recalls his magic vision; The incantation that its power gave Sleeps with the dead magician. LONE MOUNTAIN. (CEMETERY, SAN FRANCISCO. THIS is that hill of awe That Persian Sindbad saw, The mount magnetic ; And on its seaward face, Scattered along its base, The wrecks prophetic. Here come the argosies Blown by each idle breeze, To and fro shifting; Yet to the hill of Fate All drawing, soon or late,— Day by day drifting ; Drifting forever here Barks that for many a year Braved wind and weather; Shallops but yesterday Launched on yon shining bay,Drawn all together. This is the end of all: Sun thyself by the wall, Envy not Sindbad's fame: Here come alike the same, Hindbad and Sindbad. CALIFORNIA'S GREETING TO SEWARD. (1869.) We know him well: no need of praise Or bonfire from the windy hill To light to softer paths and ways The world-worn man we honour still; No need to quote those truths he spoke That burned through years of war and shame, While History carves with surer stroke Across our map his noon-day fame; No need to bid him show the scars Who lived to turn his slower feet Toward the western setting sun, To see his harvest all complete, His dream fulfilled, his duty done,— The one flag streaming from the pole, The one faith borne from sea to sea,For such a triumph, and such goal, Poor must our human greeting be. Ah! rather that the conscious land The tumult of the waterfalls, Pohono's kerchief in the breeze, The waving from the rocky walls, The stir and rustle of the trees; Till lapped in sunset skies of hope, The Young World's Premier treads the slope |