Ten long years I toiled among them,
Hopeless—as I used to say;
Now I know Hope burnt within me
Fiercer, stronger, day by day:
Those dim years of toil and sorrow
Like one long dark dream appear;
One long day of weary waiting—
Then each day was like a year.
How I cursed the land—my prison;
How I cursed the serpent sea—
And the Demon Fate that showered
All her curses upon me;
I was mad, I think—God pardon
Words so terrible and wild—
This voyage would have been my last one,
For I left a wife and child.
Never did one tender vision
Fade away before my sight,
Never once through all my slavery,
Burning day or dreary night;
In my soul it lived, and kept me,
Now I feel, from black despair,
And my heart was not quite broken,
While they lived and blest me there.
When at night my task was over,
I would hasten to the shore;
(All was strange and foreign inland,
Nothing I had known before;)
Strange looked the bleak mountain passes,
Strange the red glare and black shade,
And the Oleanders, waving
To the sound the fountains made.
Then I gazed at the great Ocean,
Till she grew a friend again;
And because she knew old England,
I forgave her all my pain:
So the blue still sky above me,
With its white clouds’ fleecy fold,
And the glimmering stars, (though brighter,)
Looked like home and days of old.
And a calm would fall upon me,
Worn perhaps with work and pain,
The wild hungry longing left me,
And I was myself again:
Looking at the silver waters,
Looking up at the far sky,
Dreams of home and all I left there
Floated sorrowfully by.
A fair face, but pale with sorrow,
With blue eyes, brimful of tears,
And the little red mouth, quivering
With a smile, to hide its fears;
Holding out her baby towards me,
From the sky she looked on me;
So it was that last I saw her,
As the ship put out to sea.
Sometimes, (and a pang would seize me
That the years were floating on,)
I would strive to paint her, altered,
And the little baby gone:
She no longer young and girlish,
The child, standing by her knee,
And her face, more pale and saddened
With the weariness for me.
Then I saw, as night grew darker.
How she taught my child to pray,
Holding its small hands together,
For its father, far away;
And I felt her sorrow, weighing
Heavier on me than my own;
Pitying her blighted spring-time,
And her joy so early flown.
Till upon my hands (now hardened
With the rough, harsh toil of years)
Bitter drops of anguish falling,
Woke me from my dream, to tears;
Woke me as a slave, an outcast.
Leagues from home, across the deep;
So—though you may call it childish—
So I sobbed myself to sleep.