Fables in Song :: :: University of Virginia Library

On the sideless seas, in the middle hour
Of the savage and measureless night; when stars
By curdling clouds were quench'd, and a shower
Of stormy sleet thro' shrouds and spars
Shriek'd; and the grieved ship seem'd to cower
Under night's weight, as wild she ran
Across the cruel grey waves; the man
Lean'd his ear to the tree (which fast
Stood over him still, a mighty mast)
For the wood, with an inward moan, began
To writhe and heave: till there came at last
A thunderous buffet of wave and wind
That shatter'd the ship. And, swept by the blast
Into the murtherous midnight, blind
With madden'd weather, clinging together,
O'er the headlong sea the man and the tree
Drifted to shore on a desert isle.

The ship and the crew had perisht meanwhile.
But the man was alive: and the tree (twice dead)
Which had saved him, still protected him.
For of part thereof, to shelter his head,
A roof he wrought; and each dripping limb
He dried and warm'd at the fire he made
Of the rest of the wood. And when morning rose
Over the reefs, with ravage spread,

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As tho' on a world all newly made,
And smiling, safe from its last birth-throes,
In freshness, sweetness, light, and repose,
The man, left lone in the desert, said
“Oh what a release! to be left in peace
By all that trouble of tiller and tackle,
The captain's cries, and the shipmen's cackle!
Each rope and sail, and yard and shroud,
That, in calm or gale, no quiet allow'd,
But must ever be shifted that way and this
For fear of shipwreck; which, all the same,
In spite of our trouble and caution came.
And oh how delicious the freedom is
From all care henceforth of the cargo that's gone,
Or the ship, that is sunk, or the voyage, that's done!”