| |
| ONE broad, white sail in Spezzia’s treacherous bay; | |
| On comes the blast; too daring bark, beware! | |
| The cloud has clasped her; lo! it melts away; | |
| The wide, waste waters, but no sail is there. | |
| |
| Morning: a woman looking on the sea; | 5 |
| Midnight: with lamps the long veranda burns; | |
| Come, wandering sail, they watch, they burn for thee! | |
| Suns come and go, alas! no bark returns. | |
| |
| And feet are thronging on the pebbly sands, | |
| And torches flaring in the weedy caves, | 10 |
| Where’er the waters lay with icy hands | |
| The shapes uplifted from their coral graves. | |
| |
| Vainly they seek; the idle quest is o’er; | |
| The coarse, dark women, with their hanging locks, | |
| And lean, wild children gather from the shore | 15 |
| To the black hovels bedded in the rocks. | |
| |
| But Love still prayed, with agonizing wail, | |
| “One, one last look, ye heaving waters, yield!” | |
| Till Ocean, clashing in his jointed mail, | |
| Raised the pale burden on his level shield. | 20 |
| |
| Slow from the shore the sullen waves retire; | |
| His form a nobler element shall claim; | |
| Nature baptized him in ethereal fire, | |
| And Death shall crown him with a wreath of flame. | |
| |
| Fade, mortal semblance, never to return; | 25 |
| Swift is the change within thy crimson shroud; | |
| Seal the white ashes in the peaceful urn; | |
| All else has risen in yon silvery cloud. | |
| |
| Sleep where thy gentle Adonais lies, | |
| Whose open page lay on thy dying heart, | 30 |
| Both in the smile of those blue-vaulted skies, | |
| Earth’s fairest dome of all divinest art. | |
| |
| Breathe for his wandering soul one passing sigh, | |
| O happier Christian, while thine eye grows dim,— | |
| In all the mansions of the house on high, | 35 |
| Say not that Mercy has not one for him! | |
| |
