The moon and the evening star
Were hanging in the shrouds;
Every mast, as it passed,
Seemed to rake the passing clouds.
They grappled with their prize,
At midnight black and cold!
As of a rock was the shock;
Heavily the ground-swell rolled.
Southward through day and dark,
They drift in close embrace;
With mist and rain to the Spanish main;
Yet there seems no change of place.
Southward, forever southward,
They drift through dark and day;
And like a dream, in the Gulf-Stream,
Sinking vanish all away.
THE NIGHT.
The day, the bitter day, divides us, sweet—
Tears from our souls the wings with which we soar
To Heaven. All things are cruel. We may meet
Only by stealth, to sigh—and all is o'er:
We part—the world is dark again, and fleet;
The phantoms of despair and doubt once more
Pursue our hearts and look into our eyes,
Till Memory grows dismayed, and sweet Hope dies.
But the still night, with all its fiery stars,
And sleep, within her world of dreams apart—
These, these are ours! Then no rude tumult mars
Thy image in the fountain of my heart—
Then the faint soul her prison-gate unbars
And springs to life and thee, no more to part,
Till cruel day our rapture disenchants,
And stills with waking each fond bosom's pants. M. E. T.