Sleeps the water wild and wan,
As in far off Toltecan
Mexico.
See, upon the sun-dial,
Waves the midnight's misty pall,
Waves and wakes.
As, in tropic Timbuctoo,
Water beasts go plashing through
Lilied lakes!
Alliteration is a splendid source of failure in this sort of poetry, and
adjectives like lissom, filmy, weary, weird, strange, make, or ought to
make, the rejection of your manuscript a certainty. The poem should, as
a rule, seem to be addressed to an unknown person, and should express
regret and despair for circumstances in the past with which the reader is
totally unacquainted. Thus:
GHOSTS.
We met at length, as Souls that sit
At funeral feast, and taste of it,
And empty were the words we said,
As fits the converse of the dead,
For it is long ago, my dear,
Since we two met in living cheer,
Yea, we have long been ghosts, you know,
And alien ways we twain must go,
Nor shall we meet in Shadow Land,
Till Time's glass, empty of its sand,
Is filled up of Eternity.
Farewell--enough for once to die--
And far too much it is to dream,
And taste not the Lethaean stream,
But bear the pain of loves unwed
Even here, even here, among the dead!
That is a cheerful intelligible kind of melody, which is often practised
with satisfactory results.
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