AMERICAN POETRY: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (b. 1807, d. 1882)

Chrysaor

Just above yon sandy bar,
As the day grows fainter and dimmer,
Lonely and lovely, a single star
Lights the air with a dusky glimmer.

Into the ocean faint and far
Falls the trail of its golden splendour,
And the gleam of that single star
Is ever refulgent, soft, and tender.

Chrysaor, rising out of the sea,
Showed thus glorious and thus emulous,
Leaving the arms of Callirrhoe,
For ever tender, soft, and tremulous.

Thus o'er the ocean faint and far
Trailed the gleam of his falchion brightly,
Is it a God, or is it a star,
That, entranced, I gaze on nightly.

from... Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: The Seaside And The Fireside (1850)