Page:Poems, now first collected, Stedman, 1897.djvu/168

THE CARIB SEA And where the rude sponge-fisher dwells

In his wattled hut, alone.

Southward, amid the strait,

Is the Castle Island Light;

Of all that bound the ocean round

It has the loneliest site.

II

'Twixt earth and heaven the waves are driven

Sorely upon its flank;

The light streams out for sea-leagues seven

To the Great Bahama Bank.

A girded tower, a furlong scant

Of whitened sand and rock,

And one sole being the waters seeing,

Where the gull and gannet flock.

He is the warder of the pass

That mariners must find;

His beard drifts down like the ashen moss

Which hangs in the southern wind.

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