When April skies are bright with sun,
And swiftly through the meadows run
The shining brooks and violet blooms
Freight sunny nooks with sweet perfumes,
Along a narrow sandy beach,
That fronts an ever widening reach
Of tossing waves, a ghostly sail
Does battle with a spectral gale.

Up from the horizon it bears,
The sunlight through the great hull glares;
The rigging strains, the masts are bent,
From clew to head the sails are rent;
And on the dark sides, wet and dank,
The mad waves toss the riven plank,
And hoarse command and windy roar
Speed swift along the curving shore.

And all the while, the sunlight gleams
On budding trees, and whispering streams;
The fisher boats drift with the tide;
The gulls each other softly chide;
The wide sea rolls with changing lights
Amid its depths, and sloping heights
Show dimly through the opal haze,
The shimmering green of April days.

When westward shadows fleck the way,
Far out amid the misty gray
That marks the southern water-line,
The streaming sails like white sprays shine;
And swift across the windless deep,
The huge, black ship her course will keep,
Sweep past the beach and disappear,
Fled utterly for one long year.

Her hull is fashioned quaint and old;
Bright is her flag with blazoned gold—
Four lions rampant on a shield,
Set high above an argent field,
Two crossed swords and a double crown,
And underneath a bastioned town,
The arms of one whose restless soul
Was wont to spurn at earth's control.

Three centuries and more ago,
So stories say, when winter's snow
Had melted in the April sun,
And violets to bloom had won,
His ship sped fast before the wind
And left the English cliffs behind,
Love watched the slow years come and wane,
But saw no sail rise up the main.

From out the silence comes no sound,
To tell us of the land she found;
No word has drifted from the deep,
Wherein her oaken timbers sleep;
Only, when in the April skies,
The golden springtime glory lies,
This blazoned flag and ghostly sail
Stream out upon a spectral gale.