Obiit MDCCCXXXIII, IX–XV

Fair ship, that from the Italian shore, Sailest the placid ocean-plains With my lost Arthur’s loved remains, Spread thy full wings, and waft him o’er.

So draw him home to those that mourn In vain; a favourable speed Ruffle thy mirror’d mast, and lead Thro’ prosperous floods his holy urn.

All night no ruder air perplex Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright As our pure love, thro’ early light Shall glimmer on the dewy decks.

Sphere all your lights around, above; Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow; Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now, My friend, the brother of my love.

My Arthur! whom I shall not see Till all my widow’d race be run; Dear as the mother to the son, More than my brothers are to me.

I hear the noise about thy keel; I hear the bell struck in the night; I see the cabin-window bright; I see the sailor at the wheel.

Thou bringest the sailor to his wife, And travell’d men from foreign lands; And letters unto trembling hands; And, thy dark freight, a vanish’d life.

So bring him: we have idle dreams: This look of quiet flatters thus Our home-bred fancies: O to us, The fools of habit, sweeter seems

To rest beneath the clover sod, That takes the sunshine and the rains, Or where the kneeling hamlet drains The chalice of the grapes of God;

Than if with thee the roaring wells Should gulf him fathom deep in brine; And hands so often clasp’d in mine, Should toss with tangle and with shells.

Calm is the morn without a sound, Calm as to suit a calmer grief, And only thro’ the faded leaf The chesnut pattering to the ground:

Calm and deep peace on this high wold, And on these dews that drench the furze, And all the silvery gossamers That twinkle into green and gold:

Calm and still light on yon great plain That sweeps with all its autumn bowers, And crowded farms and lessening towers, To mingle with the bounding main:

Calm and deep peace in this wide air, These leaves that redden to the fall; And in my heart, if calm at all, If any calm, a calm despair:

Calm on the seas, and silver sleep, And waves that sway themselves in rest, And dead calm in that noble breast Which heaves but with the heaving deep.

Lo! as a dove when up she springs To hear thro’ Heaven a tale of woe, Some dolorous message knit below The wild pulsation of her wings;

Like her I go: I cannot stay; I leave this mortal ark behind, A weight of nerves without a mind, And leave the cliffs, and haste away

O’er ocean mirrors rounded large, And reach the glow of southern skies, And see the sails at distance rise, And linger weeping on the marge,

And saying; ‘Comes he thus, my friend? Is this the end of all my care?’ And circle moaning in the air: ‘Is this the end? Is this the end?’

And forward dart again, and play About the prow, and back return To where the body sits, and learn, That I have been an hour away.

Tears of the widower, when he sees A late-lost form that sleep reveals, And moves his doubtful arms, and feels Her place is empty, fall like these;

Which weep a loss for ever new, A void where heart on heart reposed; And, where warm hands have prest and closed, Silence, till I be silent too.

Which weep the comrade of my choice, An awful thought, a life removed, The human-hearted man I loved, A spirit, not a breathing voice.

Come Time, and teach me many years I do not suffer in a dream; For now so strange do these things seem, Mine eyes have leisure for their tears;

My fancies time to rise on wing, And glance about the approaching sails, As tho’ they brought but merchants’ bales, And not the burthen that they bring.

If one should bring me this report, That thou hadst touch’d the land to-day, And I went down unto the quay, And found thee lying in the port,

And standing, muffled round with woe, Should see thy passengers in rank Come stepping lightly down the plank, And beckoning unto those they know,

And if along with these should come The man I held as half-divine; Should strike a sudden hand in mine, And ask a thousand things of home;

And I should tell him all my pain, And how my life had droop’d of late, And he should sorrow o’er my state And marvel what possess’d my brain;

And I perceived no touch of change, No hint of death in all his frame, But found him all in all the same, I should not feel it to be strange.

To night the winds began to rise And roar from yonder dropping day: The last red leaf is whirl’d away, The rooks are blown about the skies;

The forest crack’d, the waters curl’d, The cattle huddled on the lea; And wildly dash’d on tower and tree The sunbeam strikes along the world:

And but for fancies, which aver That all thy motions gently pass Athwart a plane of molten glass, I scarce could brook the strain and stir

That makes the barren branches loud; And but for fear it is not so, The wild unrest that lives in woe Would dote and pore on yonder cloud

That rises upward always higher, And onward drags a labouring breast, And topples round the dreary west, A looming bastion fringed with fire.