| |
| THERE in his room, whene’er the moon looks in, | |
| And silvers now a shell, and now a fin, | |
| And o’er his chart glides like an argosy, | |
| Quiet and old sits he. | |
| Danger! he hath grown homesick for thy smile. | 5 |
| Where hidest thou the while, heart’s boast, | |
| Strange face of beauty sought and lost, | |
| Star-face that lured him out from boyhood’s isle? | |
| |
| Blown clear from dull indoors, his dreams behold | |
| Night-water smoke and sparkle as of old, | 10 |
| The taffrail lurch, the sheets triumphant toss | |
| Their phosphor-flowers across. | |
| Towards ocean’s either rim the long-exiled | |
| Wears on, till stunted cedars throw | |
| A lace-like shadow over snow, | 15 |
| Or tropic fountains wash their agates wild. | |
| |
| Awhile, play up and down the briny spar | |
| Odors of Surinam and Zanzibar, | |
| Till blithely thence he ploughs, in visions new, | |
| The Labradorian blue; | 20 |
| All homeless hurricanes about him break; | |
| The purples of spent day he sees | |
| From Samos to the Hebrides, | |
| And drowned men dancing darkly in his wake. | |
| |
| Where the small deadly foam-caps, well descried, | 25 |
| Top, tier on tier, the hundred-mountained tide, | |
| Away, and far away, his pride is borne, | |
| Riding the noisy morn, | |
| Plunges, and preens her wings, and laughs to know | |
| The helm and tightening halyards still | 30 |
| Follow the urging of his will, | |
| And scoff at sullen earth a league below. | |
| |
| Mischance hath barred him from his heirdom high, | |
| And shackled him with many an inland tie, | |
| And of his only wisdom made a jibe | 35 |
| Amid an alien tribe: | |
| No wave abroad but moans his fallen state. | |
| The trade-wind ranges now, the trade-wind roars! | |
| Why is it on a yellowing page he pores? | |
| Ah, why this hawser fast to a garden gate? | 40 |
| |
| Thou friend so long withdrawn, so deaf, so dim, | |
| Familiar Danger, O forget not him! | |
| Repeat of thine evangel yet the whole | |
| Unto his subject soul, | |
| Who suffers no such palsy of her drouth, | 45 |
| Nor hath so tamely worn her chain, | |
| But she may know that voice again, | |
| And shake the reefs with answer of her mouth. | |
| |
| O give him back, before his passion fail, | |
| The singing cordage and the hollow sail, | 50 |
| And level with those aged eyes let be | |
| The bright unsteady sea; | |
| And move like any film from off his brain | |
| The pasture wall, the boughs that run | |
| Their evening arches to the sun, | 55 |
| The hamlet spire across the sown champaign; | |
| |
| And on the shut space and the trivial hour, | |
| Turn the great floods! and to thy spousal bower, | |
| With rapt arrest and solemn loitering, | |
| Him whom thou lovedst bring: | 60 |
| That he, thy faithful one, with praising lip, | |
| Not having, at the last, less grace | |
| Of thee than had his roving race, | |
| Sum up his strength to perish with a ship. | |
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