The Empty Boats

    Why do I see these empty boats, sailing on airy seas?
    One haunted me the whole night long, swaying with every breeze,
    Returning always near the eaves, or by the skylight glass:
    There it will wait me many weeks, and then, at last, will pass.
    Each soul is haunted by a ship in which that soul might ride
    And climb the glorious mysteries of Heaven's silent tide
    In voyages that change the very metes and bounds of Fate -
    O empty boats, we all refuse, that by our windows wait!

Vachel Lindsay

Vachel Lindsay was an American poet known for his innovative performances of his poetry, which combined spoken word with music and theatrics. Born in Springfield, Illinois, Lindsay's work often revolved around American history and culture, reflecting his progressive social views. He played a significant role in the early 20th-century American poetry scene, influencing contemporaries and later poets with his dynamic style and passionate delivery.

Vachel Lindsay

Factory Windows are always Broken

Vachel Lindsay, Simple Poetry

Above the Battle's Front

Vachel Lindsay, Simple Poetry

Darling Daughter of Babylon

Vachel Lindsay, Simple Poetry

The Soul of the City Receives the Gift of the Holy Spirit

Vachel Lindsay, Simple Poetry

English

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The Departure

        I

        I sat beside the glassy evening sea,
        One foot upon the thin horn of my lyre,
        And all its strings of laughter and desire
        Crushed in the rank wet grasses heedlessly;
        Nor did my dull eyes care to question how
        The boat close by had spread its saffron sails,
        Nor what might mean the coffers and the bales,
        And streaks of new wine on the gilded prow.
        Neither was wonder in me when I saw
        Fair women step therein, though they were fair
        Even to adoration and to awe,
        And in the gracious fillets of their hair
        Were blossoms from a garden I had known,
        Sweet mornings ere the apple buds were blown.


        II

        One gazed steadfas...

William Vaughn Moody

The Secret Of The Sea

Ah! what pleasant visions haunt me
    As I gaze upon the sea!
All the old romantic legends,
    All my dreams, come back to me.

Sails of silk and ropes of sandal,
    Such as gleam in ancient lore;
And the singing of the sailors,
    And the answer from the shore!

Most of all, the Spanish ballad
    Haunts me oft, and tarries long,
Of the noble Count Arnaldos
    And the sailor's mystic song.

Like the long waves on a sea-beach,
    Where the sand as silver shines,
With a soft, monotonous cadence,
    Flow its unrhymed lyric lines:--

Telling how the Count Arnaldos,
    With his hawk upon his hand,
Saw a fair and stately galley,
    Steering onward to the land;--

How he heard the ancient helmsman
    Chant ...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Wan Sun Westers, Faint And Slow

The wan sun westers, faint and slow;
The eastern distance glimmers gray;
An eerie haze comes creeping low
Across the little, lonely bay;
And from the sky-line far away
About the quiet heaven are spread
Mysterious hints of dying day,
Thin, delicate dreams of green and red.

And weak, reluctant surges lap
And rustle round and down the strand.
No other sound . . . If it should hap,
The ship that sails from fairy-land!
The silken shrouds with spells are manned,
The hull is magically scrolled,
The squat mast lives, and in the sand
The gold prow-griffin claws a hold.

It steals to seaward silently;
Strange fish-folk follow thro' the gloom;
Great wings flap overhead; I see
The Castle of the Drowsy Doom
Vague thro' the changeless twilight...

William Ernest Henley

The Hayswater Boat

A region desolate and wild,
Black, chafing water: and afloat,
And lonely as a truant child
In a waste wood, a single boat:
No mast, no sails are set thereon;
It moves, but never moveth on:
And welters like a human thing
Amid the wild waves weltering.

Behind, a buried vale doth sleep,
Far down the torrent cleaves its way:
In front the dumb rock rises steep,
A fretted wall of blue and grey;
Of shooting cliff and crumbled stone
With many a wild weed overgrown:
All else, black water: and afloat,
One rood from shore, that single boat.

Last night the wind was up and strong;
The grey-streakd waters labour still:
The strong blast brought a pigmy throng
From that mild hollow in the hill;
From those twin brooks, that beached strand
...

Matthew Arnold

Voyage

The mystique of the sea,
where waves act as snares,
hang boughs over wet
blackness wherever winds
die driven ashore.

Melancholy vastness-its pleasure
the dim lights swallowed
in glutton happiness
the further I search
the sea.

Paul Cameron Brown

The Dead Ship Of Harpswell

What flecks the outer gray beyond
The sundown's golden trail?
The white flash of a sea-bird's wing,
Or gleam of slanting sail?
Let young eyes watch from Neck and Point,
And sea-worn elders pray,
The ghost of what was once a ship
Is sailing up the bay.

From gray sea-fog, from icy drift,
From peril and from pain,
The home-bound fisher greets thy lights,
O hundred-harbored Maine!
But many a keel shall seaward turn,
And many a sail outstand,
When, tall and white, the Dead Ship looms
Against the dusk of land.

She rounds the headland's bristling pines;
She threads the isle-set bay;
No spur of breeze can speed her on,
Nor ebb of tide delay.
Old men still walk the Isle of Orr
Who tell her date and name,
Old shipwrights sit in ...

John Greenleaf Whittier