Page:Poems, now first collected, Stedman, 1897.djvu/167

 CASTLE ISLAND LIGHT

I

the outer Keys,

Where the drear Bahamas be,

Through a crooked pass the vessels sail

To reach the Carib Sea.

'T is the Windward Passage, long and dread,

From bleak San Salvador;

(Three thousand miles the wave must roll

Ere it wash the Afric shore).

Here are the coral reefs

That hold their booty fast;

The sea-fan blooms in groves beneath,

And sharks go lolling past.

Hither and yon the sand-bars lie

Where the prickly bush has grown, 147