Classic Poem

I

Old hoary Ocean! I have stood at night
And watched thee heaving like the shroud outspread,
Oblivion darkly casts above the dead;
While, from the abysses of thy fathomless pit,
Thou, like a giant fettered in his might,
Chafing in vain against thy prison bars,
Didst ever and anon with thunder fit
Raise up thy voice to the unanswering Stars!
Then while thy solemn dirges through me swelled,
The past rose on my spirit. I beheld
Before me rise Calypso's isle; beside
The cliff Ulysses stood, and watched the tide,
His tearful eyes turned homeward; on the sands
The black bark hewn and moulded by his hands, —
His cherished work of secret toil, prepared,
And the great strife with Ocean to be dared.

II

Low bowed the godlike man to the salt Sea,
And stretched his hands toward it, as if he
Resigned himself to its high will! his own
Fate-fixed. She stood, as into marble grown,
Against that cave which now shall be retreat
Of love no more; the sea-foam touched her feet,
Winds waved her tresses; her voluptuous eyes,
Languid with weeping, on the hero dwelt;
A mortal grief then first within her felt,
Even earthly yearnings; passion's ecstasies
Remembered, pity waked from prescient sight,
Drew tears that dimmed those eyes' ethereal light;
That falling left their fringing lashes bright!
The flower-wreath she held in her faint hand
Forgotten, dropped upon the golden sand;
The dewy roses, type of her full love,
Sank there to die; pale pansies, and, above,
The anemone unfolded her fine leaf,
Symbol and seal of an immortal grief!

III

He knelt and kissed her golden-sandalled foot,
Unheeded; she was passive, all was past;
Into the dust, hope, faith, and passion cast,
Woman-like there, forsaken at the last:
She saw, heard, felt not; hers the agony
Whose pulse absorbs an immortality.
Slowly the hero turned to her, and, mute
Inclining, in that gesture gave farewell,
Unanswered; she but saw him in his grave.
He stepped from earth, and floated on the wave,
An atom on the watery world, impelled
To seek the human forms so long withheld
From his deep bosom, that again would swell
With human sympathies; and, unrepressed,
Give way to passions petrified by rest,
And fold again his wife to his loved breast,
And share ennobling sorrows.

IV

In that boat
King-like he sate, nor needed crown remote,
His passion subject to his high command.
He raised the sail, and floated from the land,
Nor marked that form, amid the shadows dim,
Who in those waters heard his requiem.
His eye was on the Stars that seemed to keep
Watch o'er him, rolled along the wasteful deep;
Each like himself impelled by duty's sway,
To hold its incommunicable way.
There the sweet Pleiads shone, that rule the storm;
There through the mist-foam gleamed Orion's form,
And the Bear watching from his silent throne
Along a track as lonely as his own!
Fixed to the helm, he watched the Polar Star
That through the darkness shone on him from far,
Companion, guide; an altar-place to him
Strength-giving; steadfastness of godlike will,
And law of obligation to fulfil,
Opposed by fate, foes, shipwreck, and the storm.
Calm and sedate, he looked the embodied form
Of Virtue fleeing from the realm of Sense,
Strong in the shield of holier innocence!