AT SEA.

As a brave man faces the foe,

Alone against hundreds, and sees Death grin in his teeth,

But, shutting his lips, fights on to the end

Without speech, without hope, without flinching,—

So, silently, grimly, the steamer

Lurches ahead through the night.

A beacon-light far off,

Twinkling across the waves like a star!

But no star in the dark overhead!

The splash of waters at the prow, and the evil light

Of the death-fires flitting like will-o’ - the-wisps beneath! And beyond

Silence and night!

I sit by the taffrail,

Alone in the dark and the blown cold mist and the spray,

Feeling myself swept on irresistibly,

Sunk in the night and the sea, and made one with their footfall-less onrush,

Letting myself be borne like a spar adrift

Helplessly into the night.

Without fear, without wish,

Insensate save of a dull, crushed ache in my heart,

Careless whither the steamer is going,

Conscious only as in a dream of the wet and the dark

And of a form that looms and fades indistinctly

Everywhere out of the night.

O love, how came I here?

Shall I wake at thy side and smile at my dream?

The dream that grips me so hard that I cannot wake nor stir!

O love! O my own love, found but to be lost!

My soul sends over the waters a wild inarticulate cry,

Like a gull's scream heard in the night.

The mist creeps closer. The beacon

Vanishes astern. The sea's monotonous noises

Lapse through the drizzle with a listless, subsiding cadence.

And thou, O love, and the sea throb on in my brain together,

While the steamer plunges along,

Butting its way through the night.