Classic Poem

Companions, all day long we've stood,
The wild winds restless blowing;
All day we've watched the darkened flood
Around our vessel flowing.

Sunshine has never smiled since morn,
And clouds have gathered drear,
And heavier hearts would feel forlorn
And weaker minds would fear.

But look in each young shipmate's eyes
Lit by the evening flame,
And see how little stormy skies
Our joyous blood can tame.

No glance the same expression wears,
No lip the same soft smile;
Yet kindness warms and courage cheers:
Nerves every breast the while.

It is the hour of dreaming now,
The red fire brightly gleams;
And sweetest in a red fire's glow*
The hour of dreaming seems.

I may not trace the thoughts of all,
But some I read as well
As I can hear the ocean's fall
And sullen surging swell.

Edmund's swift soul is gone before:
It threads a forest wide,
Whose towers are bending to the shore*
And gazing on the tide.

And one is there; I know the voice,
The thrilling, stirring tone
That makes his bounding pulse rejoice,
Yet makes not his alone.

Mine own hand longs to clasp her hand,
Mine eye to greet her eye;
Win, white sails, win Zedora's strand*
And Ula's Eden sky.*

Mary and Flora, oft their gaze
Is clouded pensively,
And what that earnest aspect says
Is all revealed to me.

'Tis but two years, or little more,
Since first they dared that main;
And such a night may well restore
That first time back again.

The smothered sigh, the lingering late,
The longed-for, dreaded hour,
The parting at the moss-grown gate,
The last look on the tower:

I know they think of these, and then
The evening's gathering gloom,
And they alone, with foreign men
To guard their cabin room.