C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Samuel Longfellow (1819–1892)

THE GOLDEN sea its mirror spreads

Beneath the golden skies,

And but a narrow strip between

Our earth and shadow lies.

The cloud-like cliffs, the cliff-like clouds,

Dissolved in glory float,

And midway of the radiant floods

Hangs silently the boat.

The sea is but another sky,

The sky a sea as well;

And which is earth, and which the heavens,

The eye can scarcely tell.

So when for me life’s latest hour

Soft passes to its end,

May glory born of earth and heaven

The earth and heaven blend;

Flooded with light the spirit float,

With silent rapture glow,

Till where earth ends and heaven begins,

The soul can scarcely know.