Page:Reuben and other poems.pdf/63



“ was the hardest hour,” you ask, “Ever I had at sea?” There was that in the wreck of the Mary Ross Is bitten into me.

Five merry weeks of sun and speed, A ship well-mann’d and stout— One hour from home she falter’d, stopp’d Short. . . and the lights went out.

What follow’d—O just-dealing God, How firm must be Thy mind, Such a beginning to have given And such an end design’d!

. . . Sudden, from human eyes and hands And kindred human breath, Into the wild black Void, into The unthought-on fangs of Death. . ..