Littell's Living Age/Volume 144/Issue 1865/The Bubble of the Silver-Springing Waves

by William Caldwell Roscoe

The Bubble of the Silver-Springing Waves

The bubble of the silver-springing waves,
Castalian music, and that flattering sound,
Low rustling of the loved Apollian leaves,
With which my youthful hair was to be crowned,
Grow dimmer in my ears; white Beauty grieves
Over her votary, less frequent found;
And not untouched by storms, my life-boat heaves
Through the splashed ocean-waters, outward-bound.
And as the leaning mariner, his hand
Clasped on his ear, strives trembling to reclaim
Some loved lost echo from the fleeting strand,
So lean I back to the poetic land;
And in my heart a sound, a voice, a name
Hangs, as above the lamp hangs the expiring flame.