THE GRAY VICTORY
On the top of a great rock,
A rounded boulder with rust-colored stains,
Set high over the blue-green of the bay,
Braced strong with iron against the strong salt wind,
The old, gray figurehead is left.
Does any one know who set it there, so high?
Some sailor-fisherman
Who lived in a little hut beside the rock.
The hut is gone, there are the bricks of its foundation,
The old, gray figurehead is left.
A carving crude yet noble,
Of silvery, weathered wood:
A hero-woman,
Large, simple, bold and calm.
One hand is on her breast, her throat curves proudly,
Her head is thrown back proudly, she seems exulting;
There is also in her look something strangely devout,
Patient, and nobly meek.
What far-away workman made her, and what was his meaning?
Was she a Victory? or Hope, or Faith?
She looks upon the sea:
The bitter sea that cast upon these rocks
Her ship of long ago.
Who knows what agony, who knows what loss
Is in her memory? What struggle of sailors
In wild cold waves, at night?
With head thrown back
She looks upon the sea.
In every large curve of her broken body
Is trust, is triumph.
Against the sky she rises,
The light-filled, pure, ineffable azure sky;
Serene, unshaken,
Rises the Victory.