I

From Holland north he sailed away
(Lure and loss of the Orient)
To cross the Pole to far Cathay
Where the hopes of the merchants went.

Through fog and sleet and gusting weather
The Half-Moon sought the Pole;
But not for her were the lands of myrrh,
For the gods had set her goal.

The crystal gate to the isles of spice
It was not for her to find.
The white bergs kept their Paradise
And cast her down the wind.

II

Over the waste of green and gray
(North Star and the Scorpion's Heart)
The little Half-Moon she groped her way,
Cleaving the surge apart.

No more was she than a seagull's father
To that awful, billowy vast.
The rending gales made sport of her sails,
But her master's will held fast.

She scudded before the westering wind,
And league on league she won,
Till the wrath of the deep was left behind,
And the land stood fair in sun.

III

Here they touched and there they lay:
(Goodly grapes and wild-rose trees)
They stretched their hands out over the spray
To take the fragrances.

But the little Half-Moon she tugged at her tether;
She had not found her own;
Like a restless ghost she roamed the coast
Till the rose was over-blown.

And the grapes were purple upon the vine
When at last her course she took
— For the gods had given their secret sign —
Past the point of Sandy Hook.

IV

Manna-hatta all sweet with woods
(Yellow boughs on the autumn air)
Longed in her startled solitudes
For the burden her heart must bear.

But ever the master wondered whether
His path to the isles would flow
From the mighty stream that mocked his dream
Three hundred years ago.

Here were his Indies, here his fame,
Where the hidden river rolled,
Where the echoing cliff's caught up his name,
And the mountains gleamed with gold.

V

When the Hudson glistens, a moonlight strip,
(Only the gods decree the crown)
There sails up stream a little old ship
As still as thistledown.

Dutchmen and Englishmen lean together
Out from her long-nosed prow;
Antique is the group on her queer high poop;
Clouded her master's brow.

His passion breaks his postured trance,
A great sigh heaves his breast,
Still chafing at the tarriance
On his enchanted quest.