Page:Carroll - Three Sunsets.djvu/68

THE SAILOR'S WIFE. Dashed, amid the foaming tide,
 * Full upon a sunken rock.

"His face shines out against the sky
 * Like a ghost, so cold and white;

With a dead despairing eye
 * Gazing through the gathered night

"Is he watching, through the dark
 * Where a mocking ghostly hand

Points a faint and feeble spark
 * Glimmering from the distant land?

"Sees he, in this hour of dread,
 * Hearth and home and wife and child?

Loved ones who, in summers fled,
 * Clung to him and wept and smiled?

"Reeling sinks the fated bark
 * To her tomb beneath the wave:

Must he perish in the dark—
 * Not a hand stretched out to save?

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