We laid us down to sleep:
But as for me—waking,
I marked the plunge of the muffled deep
On its sandy reaches breaking;
For heart-joyance doth sometimes keep
From slumber, like heart-aching.
And I was glad that night,
With no reason ready,
To give my own heart for its deep delight,
That flowed like some tidal eddy,
Or shone like a star that was rising bright
With comforting radiance steady.
But on a sudden—hark!
Music struck asunder
Those meshes of bliss, and I wept in the dark,
So sweet was the unseen wonder;
So swiftly it touched, as if struck at a mark,
The trouble that joy kept under.
I rose—the moon outshone:
I saw the sea heaving,
And a little vessel sailing alone,
The small crisp wavelet cleaving;
'Twas she as she sailed to her port unknown—
Was that track of sweetness leaving.
We know they music made
In heaven, ere man's creation;
But when God threw it down to us that strayed
It dropt with lamentation,
And ever since doth its sweetness shade
With sighs for its first station.
Its joy suggests regret—
Its most for more is yearning;
And it brings to the soul that its voice hath met,
No rest that cadence learning,
But a conscious part in the sighs that fret
Its nature for returning.
O Eve, sweet Eve! methought
When sometimes comfort winning,
As she watched the first children's tender sport,
Sole joy born since her sinning,
If a bird anear them sang, it brought
The pang as at beginning.
While swam the unshed tear,
Her prattlers little heeding,
Would murmur, "This bird, with its carol clear.
When the red clay was kneaden,
And God made Adam our father dear,
Sang to him thus in Eden."
The moon went in—the sky
And earth and sea hiding,
I laid me down, with the yearning sigh
Of that strain in my heart abiding;
I slept, and the barque that had sailed so nigh
In my dream was ever gliding.
I slept, but waked amazed,
With sudden noise frighted,
And voices without, and a flash that dazed
My eyes from candles lighted.
"Ah! surely," methought, "by these shouts upraised
Some travellers are benighted."