 | The lion's cub |  |
TO WILLIAM JAMES LINTON.
My dear friend, Linton, if your purpose hold,And adverse fates at last propitious be,
You must be plunging through the starless sea
Between your world and ours, which is more old;
Weltering, I fear, where stormy waves are rolled,
And Arctic icebergs Spring has now set free,
Out of the darkness slowly drift a-lee,
Freighted, like life, with death's eternal cold.
But why should this foreboding heart of mine
Create disasters for you? Why deplore
What the long leagues of tempest-battered shore
May never swallow in their yeasty brine?
What said Sir Humphrey, tiller-ropes in hand?
“Heaven is as near by water as by land.”
| The lion's cub | |