John Marr and Other Poems | Page 8

tacked from land: then how betrayed?
Have currents
swerved us--snared us here?"
None heed the blades that clash in place

Under lamps dashed down that lit the
magnet's case.
Ah, what may live, who mighty swim,
Or boat-crew reach that shore
forbid,
Or cable span? Must victors drown--
Perish, even as the
vanquished did?
Man keeps from man the stifled moan;
They
shouldering stand, yet each in heart
how lone.
Some heaven invoke; but rings of reefs
Prayer and despair alike
deride
In dance of breakers forked or peaked,
Pale maniacs of the
maddened tide;
While, strenuous yet some end to earn,
The haglets
spin, though now no more astern.
Like shuttles hurrying in the looms
Aloft through rigging frayed they
ply--
Cross and recross--weave and inweave,
Then lock the web
with clinching cry
Over the seas on seas that clasp
The weltering
wreck where gurgling ends the
gasp.

Ah, for the Plate-Fleet trophy now,
The victor's voucher, flags and
arms;
Never they'll hang in Abbey old
And take Time's dust with
holier palms;
Nor less content, in liquid night,
Their captor
sleeps--the Admiral of the
White.
Imbedded deep with shells
And drifted treasure deep,
Forever he
sinks deeper in
Unfathomable sleep--
His cannon round him thrown,

His sailors at his feet,
The wizard sea enchanting them
Where
never haglets beat.
On nights when meteors play
And light the breakers dance,
The
Oreads from the caves
With silvery elves advance;
And up from
ocean stream,
And down from heaven far,
The rays that blend in
dream
The abysm and the star.
THE AEOLIAN HARP
At The Surf Inn
List the harp in window wailing
Stirred by fitful gales from sea:

Shrieking up in mad crescendo--
Dying down in plaintive key!
Listen: less a strain ideal
Than Ariel's rendering of the Real.
What
that Real is, let hint
A picture stamped in memory's mint.
Braced well up, with beams aslant,
Betwixt the continents sails the
Phocion,
For Baltimore bound from Alicant.
Blue breezy skies
white fleeces fleck
Over the chill blue white-capped ocean:
From
yard-arm comes--"Wreck ho, a
wreck!"
Dismasted and adrift,
Longtime a thing forsaken;
Overwashed by
every wave
Like the slumbering kraken;
Heedless if the billow roar,

Oblivious of the lull,
Leagues and leagues from shoal or shore,
It

swims--a levelled hull:
Bulwarks gone--a shaven wreck,
Nameless
and a grass-green deck.
A lumberman: perchance, in hold
Prostrate
pines with hemlocks rolled.
It has drifted, waterlogged,
Till by trailing weeds beclogged:

Drifted, drifted, day by day,
Pilotless on pathless way.
It has drifted
till each plank
Is oozy as the oyster-bank:
Drifted, drifted, night by
night,
Craft that never shows a light;
Nor ever, to prevent worse
knell,
Tolls in fog the warning bell.
From collision never shrinking,
Drive what may through darksome
smother;
Saturate, but never sinking,
Fatal only to the other!

Deadlier than the sunken reef
Since still the snare it shifteth,
Torpid
in dumb ambuscade
Waylayingly it drifteth.
O, the sailors--O, the sails!
O, the lost crews never heard of!
Well
the harp of Ariel wails
Thought that tongue can tell no word of!
TO THE MASTER OF THE METEOR
Lonesome on earth's loneliest deep,
Sailor! who dost thy vigil keep--

Off the Cape of Storms dost musing sweep
Over monstrous waves
that curl and comb;
Of thee we think when here from brink
We
blow the mead in bubbling foam.
Of thee we think, in a ring we link;
To the shearer of ocean's fleece
we drink,
And the Meteor rolling home.
FAR OFF-SHORE
Look, the raft, a signal flying,
Thin--a shred;
None upon the lashed
spars lying,
Quick or dead.
Cries the sea-fowl, hovering over,
"Crew, the crew?"
And the
billow, reckless, rover,
Sweeps anew!

THE MAN-OF-WAR HAWK
Yon black man-of-war-hawk that wheels in
the light
O'er the black ship's white sky-s'l, sunned
cloud to the sight,
Have we low-flyers wings to ascend to his
height?
No arrow can reach him; nor thought can
attain
To the placid supreme in the sweep of his
reign.
THE FIGURE-HEAD
The Charles-and-Emma seaward sped,
(Named from the carven pair
at prow,)
He so smart, and a curly head,
She tricked forth as a bride
knows how:
Pretty stem for the port, I trow!
But iron-rust and alum-spray
And chafing gear, and sun and dew

Vexed this lad and lassie gay,
Tears in their eyes, salt tears nor few;

And the hug relaxed with the failing glue.
But came in end a dismal night,
With creaking beams and ribs that
groan,
A black lee-shore and waters white:
Dropped on the reef, the
pair lie prone:
O, the breakers dance, but the winds they
moan!
THE GOOD CRAFT SNOW BIRD
Strenuous need that head-wind be
From purposed voyage that drives
at last
The ship, sharp-braced and dogged still,
Beating up against
the blast.
Brigs that figs for market gather,
Homeward-bound upon the stretch,

Encounter oft this uglier weather
Yet in end their port they fetch.

Mark yon craft from sunny Smyrna
Glazed with ice in Boston Bay;

Out they toss the fig-drums cheerly,
Livelier for the frosty ray.
What if sleet off-shore assailed her,
What though ice yet plate her
yards;
In wintry port not less she renders
Summer's gift with warm
regards!
And, look, the underwriters' man,
Timely, when the stevedore's done,

Puts on his specs to pry and scan,
And sets her down--A, No. 1.
Bravo, master! Bravo, brig!
For slanting snows out of the West

Never the Snow-Bird cares one fig;
And foul winds steady her,
though a pest.
OLD COUNSEL
Of The Young Master of a Wrecked California