Roll, on, O shining sun,
To the far seas,
Bring down, ye shades of eve,
The soft, salt breeze!
Shine out, O stars, and light
My darling's pathway bright,
As through the summer night
She comes to me.

No beam of any star
Can match her eyes;
Her smile the bursting day
In light outvies.
Her voice the sweetest thing
Heard by the raptured spring
When waking wild-woods ring-
She comes to me.

Ye stars, more swiftly wheel,
O'er earth's still breast;
More wildly plunge and reel
In the dim west!
The earth is lone and lorn,
Till the glad day be born,
Till with the happy morn
She comes to me.

Had we but met in other days,
Had we but loved in other ways,
Another light and hope had shone
On your life and my own.

In sweet but hopeless reveries
I fancy how your wistful eyes
Had saved me, had I known their power
In fate's imperious hour;

How loving you, beloved of God,
And following you, the path I trod
Had led me, through your love and prayers,
To God's love unawares:

And how our beings joined as one
Had passed through checkered shade and sun,
Until the earth our lives had given,
With little change, to heaven.

God knows why this was not to be.
You bloomed from childhood far from me,
The sunshine of the favored place
That knew your youth and grace.

And when your eyes, so fair and free,
In fearless beauty beamed on me,
I knew the fatal die was thrown,
My choice in life was gone.

And still with wild and tender art
Your child-love touched my torpid heart,
Gilding the blackness where it fell,
Like sunlight over hell.

In vain, in vain! my choice was gone!
Better to struggle on alone
Than blot your pure life's blameless shine
With cloudy stains of mine.

A vague regret, a troubled prayer,
And then the future vast and fair
Will tempt your young and eager eyes
With all its glad surprise.

And I shall watch you, safe and far,
As some late traveller eyes a star
Wheeling beyond his desert sands
To gladden happier lands.

After You, Pilot

Dawn gilded over dunes of sand
That border Mobile Bay
The fleet, which under Farragut
In expectation lay.
For ere that rising sun should set,
Full many a sailor bold
Should perish, leaving but a name
On history's page of gold.

Others have sung and yet shall sing
Of Farragut's renown:
How to the Hartford's maintop lashed
He gained his conqueror's crown.
Let others sing those deeds while we,
In sorrow and in pride,
Tell how one gallant gentleman
With high decorum died.

The Admiral came across the bar
With threescore flags in air,
The Gulf's blue mirror never glassed
A scene so sternly fair.
Over his fleet of eighteen ships
His dark eye proudly ran;
And Craven in the monitor
Tecumseh led the van.

Morgan and Gaines shot forth their fires
From either bellowing shore;
With deeper rage the fleet replied-
One thunderous, volleying roar.
But straight ahead bold Craven dashed
Upon the swelling tide,
To seek and smite the Tennessee,
The foeman's hope and pride.

A noble quarry! Seeking her,
Most worth his knightly steel,
He recked not of the leaking death
Beneath his gliding keel.

One moment in the conning tower
He thought of loved ones dear-
Then at the black foe's lowering bulk
He bade his pilot steer.

A roar, a shock, a shuddering plunge!
Full well did Craven know
No mortal skill might save his ship
Smit by that dastard blow.
The doom impending shrieked and beat
Its fatal wings so nigh
That only one might pass the stair
And one must pause, and die.

"After you, Pilot," Craven said.
O words of flawless fame!
Out of that awful moment bloomed
A pure, immortal name.
The pilot passed, the hero stayed;
Within that turret's round
Met glorious death and endless life
And faith by honor crowned.

The good ship plunged to ocean's ooze.
Forth from the flood and fire
Our reverence sees that gentle soul
To kindred heaven aspire;
And markswhen Craven stands beneath
God's hero-sheltering dome-
The shade of Philip Sidney rise
And bid him welcome home.