A New Earth

"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims within his ken."

I who had sought afar from earth
The faery land to greet,
Now find content within its girth,
And wonder nigh my feet.

To-day a nearer love I choose
And seek no distant sphere,
For aureoled by faery dews
The dear brown breasts appear.

With rainbow radiance come and go
The airy breaths of day,
And eve is all a pearly glow
With moonlit winds a-play.

The lips of twilight burn my brow,
The arms of night caress:
Glimmer her white eyes drooping now
With grave old tenderness.

I close mine eyes from dream to be
The diamond-rayed again,
As in the ancient hours ere we
Forgot ourselves to men.

And all I thought of heaven before
I find in earth below,
A sunlight in the hidden core
To dim the noon-day glow.

And with the Earth my heart is glad,
I move as one of old,
With mists of silver I am clad
And bright with burning gold.

--February 1896