Classic Poem

Before the stars appear on high,
I open wide my Cyclops eye,
Like them unseen by day;
Though, while they roll in distant realms,
My vacant face still guides the helms
That o'er the waters stray.

The only living things I view,
At times, are cormorant and mew;
Yet, from my stage-box grand,
I watch the drama of the skies,
And hear, through awful symphonies,
The Storm-King lead his band.

When clouds obscure the starry host,
My smile beams brighter on the tossed
And storm-imperilled ships;
While rock-cleft surges shoreward hie,
Like troubled souls whose bodies lie
Where yon horizon dips.

Then booms the signal-gun its prayer,
And counts with pulse of wild despair
The moments that remain
To those upon some bark forlore,
Ere from its wreck their souls shall soar
Beyond the hurricane.

The dawning day uncurtains night
As on a plain where fierce in fight
At eve men charged and fell;
The slain, amid bale, plank, and spar,
Though undefaced by bruise or scar,
The Tempest's victory tell,

On serpent waves, that languidly
Unroll their coils along the sea,
With victims satiate,
Until to sharp resentment urged,
By jutting points of rocks submerged,
Their dripping jaws dilate.

Yet as to Shakespeare, so to me,
Thaleia and Melpomene
Alternate come and go;
Once more flits by the merry fleet
Of barks, as in a royal street
The chariots to and fro.

The full-plumed ship, the wingless car
That, shuttle-like, to strands afar,
Bears that bright thread of gold
Which weaves, with human sympathy,
Between the warps of sky and sea,
The New World to the Old.

And I survive the barks that ply
Above the wrecks and crews that lie
Beneath the glutton wave,
As stately cenotaphs outlive
The mourners who have met to grieve
Around a new-made grave.

The cross, upon the only fane
That decks some lone and dreary plain,
Sees not the temples fair
Which, stretching in a zone sublime,
Take up in turn its belfry's chime
And girt the earth with prayer:

Nor I, adown the seaboard line,
My giant kin with eyes benign,
On keys and headlands ramp;
Like pickets posted on the shore,
Where quicksands lurk and breakers roar,
Before the Atlantic camp.

As when a father shares his gold,
The sun, ere day's last knell is tolled,
Confides to each a ray,
And like a captain when the word
And pass at change of guard are heard,
He bids us watch till day.