Fifty long years ago these sailors died:
(None know how many sleep
beneath the waves:)
Fourteen gray head-stones, rising side
by side,
Point
out their nameless graves,—
Lonely, unknown, deserted, but for me,
And the wild birds that flit
with mournful cry,
And sadder winds, and voices of the sea
That
moans perpetually.
Wives, mothers, maidens, wistfully, in
vain
Questioned the distance for
the yearning sail,
That, leaning landward, should have stretched
again
White
arms wide on the gale,
To bring back their beloved. Year
by year,
Weary they watched, till youth
and beauty passed,
And lustrous eyes grew dim, and age drew
near,
And
hope was dead at last.
Still summer broods o’er that delicious
land,
Rich, fragrant, warm with
skies of golden glow:
Live any yet of that forsaken band
Who
loved so long ago?
O Spanish women, over the far seas,
Could I but show you where
your dead repose!
Could I send tidings on this northern
breeze,
That
strong and steady blows!
Dear dark-eyed sisters, you remember yet
These you have lost, but you
can never know
One stands at their bleak graves whose
eyes are wet
With
thinking of your woe!
* * * * *
=_Edgar Allen Poe._= (Manual, p. 510.)
From his Works.
=_384._= “THE RAVEN.”
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered,
weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume
of forgotten lore,—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly
there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping
at my chamber door;
“’Tis some visitor,”
I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door,—
Only
this, and nothing more.”
Ah! distinctly I remember, it was in the
bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought
its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly
I had sought to borrow,
From my books, surcease of sorrow,—sorrow
for the lost Lenore,—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the
angels name Lenore,—
Nameless
here for evermore.
And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling
of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with
fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my
heart, I stood repeating,
“’Tis some visitor entreating
entrance at my chamber door—
Some late visitor entreating entrance
at my chamber door;
This
it is, and nothing more.”
Presently my soul grew stronger:
hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or madam,
truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is, I was napping, and so
gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping
at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you.”
Here I opened wide the door;
Darkness
there,—and nothing more.