Poems by Sir Alfred C. Lyall :: :: University of Virginia Library

The strong hot breath of the land is lashing
The wild sea-horses, they rear and race;
The plunging bows of our ship are dashing
Full in the fiery south wind's face;

She rends the water, it foams and follows,
And the silvery jet of the towering spray,
And the phosphor sparks in the deep wave hollows,
Lighten the line of our midnight way.

The moon above, with its full-orbed lustre,
Lifting the veil of the slumberous land,
Gleams o'er a desolate island cluster,
And the breakers white on the lonely sand.

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And a bare hill-range in the distance frowning
Dim wrapt in haze like a shrouded ghost,
With its jagged peaks the horizon crowning,
Broods o'er the stark Arabian coast.

See, on the edge of the waters leaping,
The lamp, far flashing, of Perim's strait
Glitters and grows, as the ship goes sweeping
Fast on its course for the Exile's Gate.

And onward still to the broadening ocean
Out of the narrow and perilous seas,
Till we rock with a large and listless motion
In the moist soft air of the Indian breeze.

And the Southern Cross, like a standard flying,
Hangs in the front of the tropic night,
But the Great Bear sinks, like a hero dying,
And the Pole-star lowers its signal light;

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And the round earth rushes toward the morning,
And the waves grow paler and wan the foam,
Misty and dim, with a glance of warning,
Vanish the stars of my northern home.

Let the wide waste sea for a space divide me,
Till the close-coiled circles of time unfold,
Till the stars rise westward to greet and guide me,
When the exile ends, and the years are told.

Báb el Mandeb.