Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/359

CASTLE ISLAND LIGHT (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,

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

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.

The old man hoar stands on the shore

And bodes the withering gale, 329