“Ye speak me true, my leetle son,
  So—­so, it came to me,
A-drifting landwards on a spar,
  And grey dawn on the sea.

“Ay, ay, I could not be mistook;
  I knew them leafy trees,
I knew that land so witchery sweet,
  And that old noise of seas.

“Though here I’ve sailed a score of years,
  And heard ’em, dream or wake,
Lap small and hollow ’gainst my cheek,
  On sand and coral break;

“‘Yet now,’ my leetle son, says I,
  A-drifting on the wave,
’That land I see so safe and green,
  Is England, I believe.

“’And that there wood is English wood,
  And this here cruel sea,
The selfsame old blue ocean
  Years gone remembers me.

“’A-sitting with my bread and butter
  Down ahind yon chitterin’ mill;
And this same Marinere’—­(that’s me),
  ’Is that same leetle Will!—­

“’That very same wee leetle Will
  Eating his bread and butter there,
A-looking on the broad blue sea
  Betwixt his yaller hair!’

“And here be I, my son, thrown up
  Like corpses from the sea,
Ships, stars, winds, tempests, pirates past,
  Yet leetle Will I be!”

He said no more, that sailorman,
  But in a reverie
Stared like the figure of a ship
  With painted eyes to sea.

THE PHANTOM

“Upstairs in the large closet, child,
  This side the blue room door,
Is an old Bible, bound in leather,
  Standing upon the floor;

“Go with this taper, bring it me;
  Carry it so, upon your arm;
It is the book on many a sea
  Hath stilled the waves’ alarm.”

Late the hour, dark the night,
  The house is solitary;
Feeble is a taper’s light
  To light poor Ann to see.

Her eyes are yet with visions bright
  Of sylph and river, flower and fay,
Now through a narrow corridor
  She goes her lonely way.

Vast shadows on the heedless walls
  Gigantic loom, stoop low: 
Each little hasty footfall calls
  Hollowly to and fro.

In the cold solitude her heart
  Remembers sorrowfully
White winters when her mother was
  Her loving company.

Now in the dark clear glass she sees
  A taper, mocking hers,—­
A phantom face of light blue eyes,
  Reflecting phantom fears.

Around her loom the vacant rooms,
  Wind the upward stairs,
She climbs on into a loneliness
  Only her taper shares.

Out in the dark a cold wind stirs,
  At every window sighs;
A waning moon peers small and chill
  From out the cloudy skies,

Casting faint tracery on the walls;
  So stony still the house
From cellar to attic rings the shrill
  Squeak of the hungry mouse.

Her grandmother is deaf with age;
  A garden of moonless trees
Would answer not though she should cry
  In anguish on her knees.