Ah, what may live, who mighty swim,
Or boat-crew reach that shore forbid,
Or cable span?  Must victors drown—­
Perish, even as the vanquished did? 
Man keeps from man the stifled moan;
They shouldering stand, yet each in heart
    how lone.

Some heaven invoke; but rings of reefs
Prayer and despair alike deride
In dance of breakers forked or peaked,
Pale maniacs of the maddened tide;
While, strenuous yet some end to earn,
The haglets spin, though now no more astern.

Like shuttles hurrying in the looms
Aloft through rigging frayed they ply—­
Cross and recross—­weave and inweave,
Then lock the web with clinching cry
Over the seas on seas that clasp
The weltering wreck where gurgling ends the
    gasp.

Ah, for the Plate-Fleet trophy now,
The victor’s voucher, flags and arms;
Never they’ll hang in Abbey old
And take Time’s dust with holier palms;
Nor less content, in liquid night,
Their captor sleeps—­the Admiral of the
    White.

    Imbedded deep with shells
    And drifted treasure deep,
    Forever he sinks deeper in
    Unfathomable sleep—­
    His cannon round him thrown,
    His sailors at his feet,
    The wizard sea enchanting them
    Where never haglets beat.

    On nights when meteors play
    And light the breakers dance,
    The Oreads from the caves
    With silvery elves advance;
    And up from ocean stream,
    And down from heaven far,
    The rays that blend in dream
    The abysm and the star.

THE AEOLIAN HARP At The Surf Inn

List the harp in window wailing
  Stirred by fitful gales from sea: 
Shrieking up in mad crescendo—­
  Dying down in plaintive key!

Listen:  less a strain ideal
Than Ariel’s rendering of the Real. 
  What that Real is, let hint
  A picture stamped in memory’s mint.

Braced well up, with beams aslant,
Betwixt the continents sails the Phocion,
For Baltimore bound from Alicant. 
Blue breezy skies white fleeces fleck
Over the chill blue white-capped ocean: 
From yard-arm comes—­“Wreck ho, a
    wreck!”

Dismasted and adrift,
Longtime a thing forsaken;
Overwashed by every wave
Like the slumbering kraken;
Heedless if the billow roar,
Oblivious of the lull,
Leagues and leagues from shoal or shore,
It swims—­a levelled hull: 
Bulwarks gone—­a shaven wreck,
Nameless and a grass-green deck. 
A lumberman:  perchance, in hold
Prostrate pines with hemlocks rolled.

It has drifted, waterlogged,
Till by trailing weeds beclogged: 
  Drifted, drifted, day by day,
  Pilotless on pathless way. 
It has drifted till each plank
Is oozy as the oyster-bank: 
  Drifted, drifted, night by night,
  Craft that never shows a light;
Nor ever, to prevent worse knell,
Tolls in fog the warning bell.