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I see a beautiful gigantic swimmer swimming naked through the eddies of the sea,

His brown hair lies close and even to his head, he strikes out with courageous arms, he urges himself with his legs,

I see his white body, I see his undaunted eyes,

I hate the swift-running eddies that would dash him head-foremost on the rocks.

What are you doing you ruffianly red-trickled waves?

Will you kill the courageous giant? will you kill him in the prime of his middle age?

Steady and long he struggles,

He is baffled, bang'd, bruis'd, he holds out while his strength holds out,

The slapping eddies are spotted with his blood, they bear him away, they roll him, swing him, turn him,

His beautiful body is borne in the circling eddies, it is continually bruis'd on rocks,

Swiftly and out of sight is borne the brave corpse.

I turn but do not extricate myself,

Confused, a past-reading, another, but with darkness yet.

The beach is cut by the razory ice-wind, the wreck-guns sound,

The tempest lulls, the moon comes floundering through the drifts.

I look where the ship helplessly heads end on, I hear the burst as she strikes, I hear the howls of dismay, they grow fainter and fainter.

I cannot aid with my wringing fingers,

I can but rush to the surf and let it drench me and freeze upon me.

I search with the crowd, not one of the company is washed to us alive,

In the morning I help pick up the dead and lay them in rows in a barn.

Now of the older war-days, the defeat at Brooklyn,

Washington stands inside the lines, he stands on the intrenched hills amid a crowd of officers,