Page:Reuben and other poems.pdf/17

 Voiced as it were of that smooth basking Blue

Beneath, the heart inveterately wild:—

Or else compute, of every passing ship,

Curtseying schooner, seated red-wing’d barge,

Or hurried steamer busily riving up

The unresisting gloss, their several speed,

Tonnage and cargo, whence and whither bound,

But never grudge the roving of their keels:

At night-fall, by the drift-oak’s various flame,

To pore upon old work-plans, books and charts,

With notes in labour’d writing; to survey

Old calculations, once work’d out, or go

Securely back in thought to old chill hours

Ere dawn. . . once more the breast-plate heavy hangs,

The caging helmet drops. . . the difficult breath

Buzzes. . . now, slowly over the boat-side

Heav’'d is the weighty body, and grows light;

While, flash’d to fire on either hand, the Dark

Pulses with radiance! till the far-off dawn,

Flushing yon upper world to life, pales this,

And weirdly thro’ the cold green glimmer move

Shadowy forms deep-dwelling. Ay, but cleave

With steady axe this ocean-thicket, ’mid

Whose moving tangle, What, unmoving looms,

What gleams? Kind Heaven, the pity! Where between

The drown’d ship’s ribs, ’mid fecund ooze and growth

That have no sense and yet how thick may thrive!

Mothers’ sons, bare boned, lie in cabins cold