Page:All quiet along the Potomac and other poems.djvu/338

 33 2 THE BURIED SHIP.

Then the wise old salts by the firesides said, With many a shake of each whitened head, They remembered well that October blow And the sinking wreck fifty years ago.

Old ship ! awaked from your solemn sleep On the sifted sand of the silent deep, Do you come for news from the nigh mainland That northward crescents yon strip of sand? Have you come to watch with a jealous eye How the wingless steamship bustles by ? Have you heard the call of the cable s thrill As it pulsed some echo of human will ?

Have the parted links of a riven chain Jangled down to tell of a great wrong slain ? Have the ruddy drops of a soldier s blood Never brought war-news on the ebbing flood, Nor wave astray from the Gulf Stream s tide Told of yellow gold where the sunsets hide Never home-sick heart neath a miner s tent From the far Sierras a cloud-kiss sent ?

Do you miss the souls into harbor passed Since the sunbeams gilded your gallant mast? Through the rapid flight of the buried years Heard you never of stranded hopes and fears ? So, finding the world would not come to thee, Hast thou come, old ship, for thyself to see, Like a sleeper sound, who has lain too long, Wakened up at last by a fisher s song?

�� �