Longfellow (Tales of a Wayside Inn).
This was written in 1863, but ten years earlier Alexander Smith, in “A Life Drama,” had written:
We twain have met like the ships upon the sea,
Who hold an hour’s converse, so short, so sweet;
One little hour! and then away they speed
On lonely paths, through mist, and cloud, and foam,
To meet no more.
Other writers have also used the same simile. See next poem.