V

He is as one who, treading salty scurf Of lonely sea-sands, hears the roaring rocks Of some lost isle of misty crags and lochs; Who sees no sea, but, through a world of surf, Gray ghosts of gulls and screaming petrel flocks: When, from the deep’s white ruin and wild wreck, Above the fog, beneath the ghostly gull, The iron ribs of some storm-shattered hull Loom, packed with pirate treasure to the deck A century rotten: feels his wealth replete, When long-baulked ocean claims it; and one dull Wave flings, derisive at despondent feet, A skull, one doubloon rattling in the skull.