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| TOIL on! toil on! ye ephemeral train, | |
| Who build in the tossing and treacherous main; | |
| Toil on,—for the wisdom of man ye mock, | |
| With your sand-based structures and domes of rock; | |
| Your columns the fathomless fountains lave, | 5 |
| And your arches spring up to the crested wave; | |
| Ye ’re a puny race, thus to boldly rear | |
| A fabric so vast, in a realm so drear. | |
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| Ye bind the deep with your secret zone, | |
| The ocean is seal’d, and the surge a stone; | 10 |
| Fresh wreaths from the coral pavement spring, | |
| Like the terraced pride of Assyria’s king; | |
| The turf looks green where the breakers roll’d; | |
| O’er the whirlpool ripens the rind of gold; | |
| The sea-snatch’d isle is the home of men, | 15 |
| And mountains exult where the wave hath been. | |
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| But why do ye plant ’neath the billows dark | |
| The wrecking reef for the gallant bark? | |
| There are snares enough on the tented field, | |
| ’Mid the blossom’d sweets that the valleys yield; | 20 |
| There are serpents to coil, ere the flowers are up; | |
| There ’s a poison-drop in man’s purest cup, | |
| There are foes that watch for his cradle breath, | |
| And why need ye sow the floods with death? | |
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| With mouldering bones the deeps are white, | 25 |
| From the ice-clad pole to the tropics bright;— | |
| The mermaid hath twisted her fingers cold | |
| With the mesh of the sea-boy’s curls of gold, | |
| And the gods of ocean have frown’d to see | |
| The mariner’s bed in their halls of glee;— | 30 |
| Hath earth no graves, that ye thus must spread | |
| The boundless sea for the thronging dead? | |
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| Ye build,—ye build,—but ye enter not in, | |
| Like the tribes whom the desert devour’d in their sin; | |
| From the land of promise ye fade and die, | 35 |
| Ere its verdure gleams forth on your weary eye;— | |
| As the kings of the cloud-crown’d pyramid, | |
| Their noteless bones in oblivion hid; | |
| Ye slumber unmark’d ’mid the desolate main, | |
| While the wonder and pride of your works remain. | 40 |
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