XXVII
Sordino looking for his boy that night,
Found him departed, whither, none could tell;
They sought him in the tavern and the street,
But all in vain; the watchman on his beat
Was queried, as he passed and cried: “All’s well!”
And laughingly replied: “He’s out of sight!”
The boy had weary grown and sick for home,
When he his master saw with drunkards douce,
And dared the denseness of the fog, to find
That place which daily occupied his mind,—
The little cottage ’mongst the trees, recluse,
Seemed grander than the city’s pillard dome.
A dog might find its way, but not a child,
Through such a maze, bewildering and weird;
He thought, he surely knew the homeward road,
And eagerly, for hours, he onward strode,
But only to discover, what he feared:
He was as lost as ’mid a forest wild.
The Thames was like a spectral realm of sound
And shapes: The masts of many ships at tow
Were dimly visible, and larger seemed,—
Like mighty giants, as the moonlight beamed
Into the woolly fog. The sounds below:—
The river’s song, and baying of a hound.
All else was silent till a sailor coughed
And damned the dog which thus disturbed his sleep;
And now the wand’ring lad called out in fear:
“I’m lost, oh, help me, who-soe’er is near!”
To which a voice arose, as from the deep:
“It is a lubber straying from his croft.”
But then, ere long, there was a splash of oar,
And muffled talking twixt two drowsy tars,
The boy took heart, since rescue was at hand;
But when he found himself pushed out from land,
And lifted to a deck of lofty spars,
He kind of wished himself back to the shore.
The sailors showed him to a bunk for rest.
“Yea, in the morn the fog may lifted be,
So you can find your way,” thus cheered they him;
But as of old the halfbaked Ephraim
Howled on his bed, so would now even he,
Had not submission been for him the best.