Classic Poem

On the dark and troubled billows, lo! thou gleamest, as a star,
And we catch a pallid lustre ere we lose thy trace afar.
What the burthen on thy bosom? is it treasure, is it weed?
Glows that whiteness with thy rapture, is it deathly with thy need?

'Tis a boon beyond all asking that I bear upon my breast,
As beyond Hope's trembling urgings, direst Certainty is best.
Show your garlands, wave your banners, call your joyaunce half divine;
Yours are warm and living pleasures, but the dead, cold gem is mine.

He is mine, but not to crown me, not to take my passive hand,
Not to lead me forth, the proudest, chosen from a chosen band;
Could a ring unite our fortunes, it should wed the sky and sea,—
Draw me up from storm and battle, draw my lov'd one down to me.

He is mine by lips that speak not, by the calm, impassive brow,
By the eyes whose lids are marble, fix'd on other visions now,
By the deathless bond of sorrow, by the length of joy deferred,
By the sign of lofty meaning, and the deep remembered word.

As yon ocean-island woman many a league her husband bore,
Swimming painfully and breathless, that the dead might reach the shore;
Without brighter hope or promise to uphold her weary way,
Than to lay him where the steadfast Earth should shelter his decay;

So, thro' seas that swell to madness with the buffet of the storm,
In the arms that struggle onward, still I bear his lifeless form,
Till some wave, with swift uplifting, on the sands shall lay us both,
On the bosom of God's mercy, in the wholeness of our troth.