Two Twilights

<SPAN name="chap028"></SPAN> <h3> NUNC DIMITTIS </h3> <p class="poem"> Highlands of Navesink,<br/> By the blue ocean's brink,<br/> Let your gray bases drink<br/> <SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">Deep of the sea.</SPAN><br/> Tide that comes flooding up,<br/> Fill me a stirrup cup,<br/> Pledge me a parting sup,<br/> <SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">Now I go free.</SPAN><br/></p> <p class="poem"> Wall of the Palisades,<br/> I know where greener glades,<br/> Deeper glens, darker shades,<br/> <SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">Hemlock and pine,</SPAN><br/> Far toward the morning lie<br/> Under a bluer sky,<br/> Lifted by cliffs as high,<br/> <SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">Haunts that are mine.</SPAN><br/></p> <p class="poem"> Marshes of Hackensack,<br/> See, I am going back<br/> Where the Quinnipiac<br/> <SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">Winds to the bay,</SPAN><br/> Down its long meadow track,<br/> Piled with the myriad stack,<br/> Where in wide bivouac<br/> <SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">Camps the salt hay.</SPAN><br/></p> <p class="poem"> Spire of old Trinity,<br/> Never again to be<br/> Sea-mark and goal to me<br/> <SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">As I walk down;</SPAN><br/> Chimes on the upper air,<br/> Calling in vain to prayer,<br/> Squandering your music where<br/> <SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">Roars the black town:</SPAN><br/></p> <p class="poem"> Bless me once ere I ride<br/> Off to God's countryside,<br/> Where in the treetops hide<br/> <SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">Belfry and bell;</SPAN><br/> Tongue of the steeple towers,<br/> Telling the slow-paced hours&mdash;<br/> Hail, thou still town of ours&mdash;<br/> <SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2em">Bedlam, farewell!</SPAN><br/></p> <br/><br/><br/> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />