Christopher Pearse Cranch

As once I sat upon the shore
There came to me a fairy boat,
A bark I never saw before,
Whose coming I had failed to note,…

(A True Story)SHE stood beside the iron road,
A little child of ten years old.
She heard two meeting thunders rolled
From north and south, that plainly showed…

OUT of the cloud that dimmed his sunset light,
Into the unknown firmament withdrawn
Beyond the mists and shadows of the night,
We mourn the friend and teacher who has gone.…

THE small enlarged, the distant nearer brought
To sight, made marvels in a denser age.
But Science turns with every year a page
In the enchanted volume of her thought.…

THOUGHT is deeper than all speech,
Feeling deeper than all thought:
Souls to souls never can teach
What unto themselves was taught.We are spirits clad in veils;…

1.GONE is the tempest that clouded
The land with its dark desolation.
Out from the pall that enshrouded
Leaps the new strength of the nation.2.Never again shall the cannon…

Beyond the low marsh-meadows and the beach,
Seen through the hoary trunks of windy pines,
The long blue level of the ocean shines.
The distant surf, with hoarse, complaining speech,…

ON a time — not of old —
When a poet had sent out his soul and no welcome had found
Where the heart of the nation in prose stood fettered and bound
In fold upon fold —…

COLD philosophers, so apt
With your formulas exacting,
In your problems so enwrapt,
And your theories distracting;…

WITH streaming pennons, scorning sail and oar,
With steady tramp and swift revolving wheel,
And even pulse from throbbing heart of steel,
She plies her arrowy course from shore to shore.…

MANY a year has fled away
Since this old palette was new,
As may be seen by the spots of green
And yellow and red and blue.Many a picture was painted from this,…

I MET one in the Land of Sleep
Who seemed a friend long known and true.
I woke. That friend I could not keep —
For him I never knew.…

PHOEBUS Apollo, from Olympus driven,
Lived at Admetus, tending herds and flocks:
And strolling o'er the pastures and the rocks
He found his life much duller than in Heaven.…

THE LIGHTS and shadows of long ago
In the grand old Forest of Fontainebleau
Go with me still wherever I go.I range my pictures around my room,
Won from the forest’s light and gloom;…

THE Summer goes, with all its birds and flowers;
The Autumn passes with its solemn sky;
The Winter comes again — yet you and I
Know not the old companionship once ours.…

AN old umbrella in the hall,
Battered and baggy, quaint and queer;
By all the rains of many a year
Bent, stained, and faded — that is all.…

Saint Brandan, a Scotch abbot, long ago
Sailed southward with a swarm of monks, to sow
The seeds of true religion — nothing else —
Among the tribes of naked infidels.…

YE idle hours of summer, not in vain,
To one by Nature's beauty fed, ye pass —
Though sending through the mental camera glass
No philosophic lesson to the brain,…

THE mind's deep history here in tones is wrought,
The faith, the struggles of the aspiring soul,
The confidence of youth, the chill control
Of manhood's doubts by stern experience taught;…

ONE day in the bluest of summer weather,
Sketching under a whispering oak,
I heard five bobolinks laughing together
Over some ornithological joke.What the fun was I couldn't discover.…

O SOLEMN portal, veiled in mist and cloud,
Where all who have lived throng in, an endless line,
Forbid to tell by backward look or sign
What destiny awaits the advancing crowd;…

A WONDROUS light is filling the air,
And rimming the clouds of the old despair;
And hopeful eyes look up to see
Truth's mighty electricity,--…

STILL shines our August day, as calm, as bright
As when, long years ago, we sailied away
Down the blue Narrows and the widening bay
Into the wrinkling ocean's flashing light;…

THOSE times are gone, that circle thinned away,
And we who live, now scattered far and wide,
Each in our separate centres fixed abide,
Round which new interests now revolve and play…