A Song of the Future
Sail fast, sail fast,Ark of my hopes, Ark of my dreams;Sweep lordly o’er the drowned Past,Fly glittering through the sun’s strange beams;Sail fast, sail fast.Breaths of new buds from off some drying leaWith news about the Future scent the sea:My brain is beating like the heart of Haste:I’ll loose me a bird upon this Present waste;Go, trembling song,And stay not long; oh, stay not long:Thou’rt only a gray and sober dove,But thine eye is faith and thy wing is love.
Baltimore, 1878.