 | The Literary Works of James Smetham |  |
SORROW ON THE SEA
(“There is sorrow on the sea; it cannot be quiet.”—
Jeremiah xlix. 23)
Jeremiah xlix. 23)
The moon-drawn Deep, sad, endless font of tears,
Rests never—rests not under mildest suns,
And under softest moonbeams never sleeps.
She sorrowed at her birth, she sorrows still:
Her eyes weep ever, and her quivering lip,
Restless with sorrow, whitens round the world:
Now loud, now low, now silent is her voice;
But still she mourns. In mute midwinter's frost
Where spiked Auroras crackle in the air,
Sullen and dumb, with white unfooted snows
Wrapt over her, she lies and waits till suns
Of the brief summer crack the icebergs' roots,
While unsealed straits explode, and breaking floes
279
Whose ribs were clasped all winter in the arms
Of tightening glaciers; then she swells and pants,
And struggles with her weight of turbulent woe,
And welters round the narwhale's wounded sides,
Joining her voice to that loud-sounding horn
Through which his heart's blood spouts into the air;
Or moans, or thunders as the toppling spires
And breaking arches of the ice temples fall.
Oct. 4, 1868.
| The Literary Works of James Smetham | |