Sonnets From Over Sea

As sinks the sun behind yon alien hills
Whose heather-purpled slopes, in glory rolled,
Flush all my thought with momentary gold,
What pang of vague regret my fancy thrills?
Here ’t is enchanted ground the peasant tills,
Where the shy ballad dared its blooms unfold,
And memory’s glamour makes new sights seem old,
As when our life some vanished dream fulfills;
Yet not to thee belong these painless tears,
Land loved ere seen: before my darkened eyes,
From far beyond the waters and the years,
Horizons mute that wait their poet rise;
The stream before me fades and disappears,
And in the Charles the western splendor dies.

Amid these fragments of heroic days
When thought met deed with mutual passion’s leap,
There sits a Fame whose silent trump makes cheap
What short-lived rumor of ourselves we raise;
They had far other estimate of praise
Who stamped the signet of their souls so deep
In art and action, and whose memories keep
Their height like stars above our misty ways:
In this grave presence to record my name
Something within me hangs the head and shrinks;
Dull were the soul without some joy in fame;
Yet here to claim remembrance were, methinks,
Like him who, in the desert’s awful frame,
Notches his cockney initials on the Sphinx.