 | [Poems by Whittier in] A Study of Whittier's Apprenticeship as a Poet |  |
A CALM AT SEA
I would not rest so still on those dark waters,Where yonder bark upheaves her milky sail,
Like a white crag from out the glassy deep;
For it would seem as if the pulse of mind,
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A living dead one, who to think or feel,
Must ever think or feel the same dull thoughts;
A monument undying of dead life.
And yet those are who thus do gaze on things,
Until the tide of Time will bear them off
And then, poor leaden souls, they slowly sink
And the blue waters cover them.
A ship at rest! An image of despair.
Around it silence, yet within its hulk,
A consciousness of ill—of fettered restlessness;
Bound like a victim at the stake to die,
Who bears the torment, yet seems not to feel.
And thus it is with man whose frame is chained
To this poor earth, by the frail bonds of life,
When Hope points out another better sphere,
Where are forgotten all the pains of this.
He waits, a ship at rest, for some blest breeze,
To waft him onward to the port of heaven.
Boston Statesman, August 11, 1827
| [Poems by Whittier in] A Study of Whittier's Apprenticeship as a Poet | |