It's midnight, and from me has sleep
Flown afar, like a bird on the wing,
All tired is my heart as I weep
Through a winter that knows not a spring.
Why dost thou respond to my plea
With only a minor refrain?
Thy voice in a moan floats to me,
As an echo sobbed from my pain.
Hast thou a grief, too, like mine,
That never heals with the years;
A bosom entombing a shrine
Bedewed with the waste of thy tears?
Where lies my loved one to-night
Beneath thy grey mantle so wide?
I would that his slumber were light,
To wake with the flow of the tide.
Should he not wake, bear him this,
An amaranth plucked from my heart;
Wreathe it soft in his dreams with a kiss,
Then return, and ere I depart.
On the flood of my soul's overflow.
Borne on by my grief from the wild
Of this storm-beaten life, let me know
How he slept; let me know if he smiled.
Loss of the Steamship Florizel
What changed thy face from that of yesterday,
Great Sea! that with thy mothering hands outspread
And smiling on our common life, didst lay
The table covers for our daily bread?
To-day, held by the thresh of iron shocks
Within the vortex of a lightless fate,
Thy hands are tearing seaweed on the rocks,
And thou—a stark and wild inebriate.