[Poems by Sargent in] The Boston book Being specimens of metropolitan literature, occasional and periodical |
 | RECORDS AT SEA. |
 | [Poems by Sargent in] The Boston book |  |
280
RECORDS AT SEA.
THE DEPARTURE.
Again thy winds are pealing in mine ear!Again thy waves are flashing in my sight!
Thy memory-haunting tones again I hear,
As, through the spray, our vessel wings her flight!
On thy cerulean breast, now swelling high,
Again, thou broad Atlantic, am I cast!
Six years, with noiseless tread, have glided by,
Since the unsounded deep I traversed last.
The sea-birds o'er me wheel, as if to greet
An old companion; on my naked brow,
The sparkling foam-drops not unkindly beat;
Flows through my hair the fresh'ning breeze—and now
Th' horizon's ring enclasps me; and I stand,
Gazing where fades from view, cloud-like, my father-land!
281
NIGHT.
But, oh! the night—the cool, luxurious night,Which closes round us when the day grows dim,
And the sun sinks from his meridian height,
Behind the ocean's occidental rim!
Clouds, in thin streaks of purple, green and red,
Gather around his setting, and absorb
The last rich rays of glory, that are shed,
In wide profusion, from his failing orb.
And now the moon, her lids unclosing, deigns
To smile serenely on the charmed sea,
That shines as if inlaid with lightning chains,
From which it hardly struggled to be free.
Swan-like, with motion unperceived, we glide,
Touched by the downy breeze, and favored by the tide.
TO ---.
Leagues of blue ocean are between us spread;And I cannot behold thee, save in dreams!
I cannot hear the music round thee shed,
I do not see the light that from thee gleams.
Fairest and best! 'mid summer joys, ah, say,
Dost thou e'er think of one, who thinks of thee—
Th' Atlantic-wanderer—who, day by day,
Looks for thy image in the deep, deep sea?
Long months, and years perchance, may pass away,
Ere he shall gaze upon thy face again;
He cannot know what rocks and quicksands lay
Before him, on the Future's shipless main;
But, thanked be Memory! there are treasures still,
Which the triumphant mind holds subject to its will.
| [Poems by Sargent in] The Boston book | |