VISITATION

All through my fevered nights, their grey ghosts came,

The great, cool sailing ships blown softly by,

More fair than any beauty that we name,

Girdled of water, chrismed of the sky.

I cannot tell what hidden bales of prize,

What mystic spell may haunt the wraiths of ships,

But these were secret healing on my eyes,

And these were cooling water at my lips.

It may be, when the final fever ends,

And flesh burns out, at last, and pulses fail,

They will not know, my grieved and stricken friends,

How in that instant I had given hail

To one white ship come ghostwise in from sea,

And how at last that it is well with me.