In throbbing night 'twixt sleep and sleep
My tortured spirit heard
A wail that wandered down the deep,
A sorrow on the windy deep
Wail like a wounded bird;
And I wept as a haunted man doth weep
Who dare not speak a word.
Sometimes I sensed heaven's bellied gloom,
Storm like dumb and pregnant doom
Scowl on the waters wild;
Or tempest 'neath a plunging sky
Down crashing waves with haunting cry
Scream like a tortured child;
A blind thing staggering in the night
Strained, groaning, 'gainst a pervious power
That flashed and eddied, wild and white,
That wheeled and wailed from hour to hour;
And, somewhere, strangely burned to sight
Dawn like a doom a-flower ...
On ever onward, darkly driven,
A soul, unsheltered, and unshriven,
With lodestar gone, with raiment riven,
Drove in the gale of the wrath of Heaven ...
The monsoon blew; the changing stars
Rode by in deeper skies.
At times between the raking spars
I felt the blank moon rise;
Or heard the chanties of the tars
With a sad, sick surprise.
And once a heaven, the sapphire's hue,
Flashed o'er the freshening wave;
They hurt the heart as laughers do
When love stands by a grave.
And now a level ocean grey
Would lie along a level day,
Unwhipt of wing or wind;
Or sunset make a carmine stain
That sucked like sadness at the brain,
And sank into the mind,
And touched me with some wandering pain,
Some sentience of mankind again.
... And where was she?... Could sorrow fail
In aching time ... Ah voice in vain
That called for ever ... fading sail
On seas forlorn; sad wind and rain
Whispering ... all-wandering pain ...
And in the heart the wail—
Never again on earth—never again.
So dimly to a beauteous ghost
My being bowed a subject knee,
And lived, with love's sad sunset lost,
Alone 'mid all the sea.
A leper to a lonely coast,
I fled from all I cherished most;
And wildly, with a bleeding boast,
I clasped my agony ...
Sad nature strained the leash in vain,
And flying, fled not; ever the chain
Of the Fear that followed; ever again
Relentless pity; guardian pain ...