Poems of Sidney Lanier/A Song of the Future

A Song of the Future
by Sidney Lanier

Sidney Lanier composed this poem in Baltimore, Maryland in 1878.

117479A Song of the FutureSidney Lanier

            Sail fast, sail fast,
      Ark of my hopes, Ark of my dreams;
      Sweep lordly o’er the drowned Past,
      Fly glittering through the sun’s strange beams;
            Sail fast, sail fast.
Breaths of new buds from off some drying lea
With news about the Future scent the sea:
My brain is beating like the heart of Haste:
I’ll loose me a bird upon this Present waste;
            Go, trembling song,
      And stay not long; oh, stay not long:
      Thou’rt only a gray and sober dove,
      But thine eye is faith and thy wing is love.


This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.

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