Classic Poem

The old sea-captain has sailed the seas
So long, that the waves at mirth,
Or the waves gone wild, and the crests of these,
Were as near playmates from birth:
He has loved both the storm and the calm, because
They seemed as his brothers twain, —
The flapping sail was his soul's applause,
And his rapture, the roaring main.

But now — like a battered hulk seems he,
Cast high on a foreign strand,
Though he feels " in port, " as it need must be,
And the stay of a daughter's hand —
Yet ever the round of the listless hours, —
His pipe, in the languid air —
The grass, the trees, and the garden flowers,
And the strange earth everywhere!

And so betimes he is restless here
In this little inland town,
With never a wing in the atmosphere
But the windmill's, up and down;
His daughter's home in this peaceful vale,
And his grandchild 'twixt his knees —
But never the hail of a passing sail,
Nor the surge of the angry seas!

He quits his pipe, and he snaps its neck —
Would speak, though he coughs instead,
Then paces the porch like a quarter-deck
With a reeling mast o'erhead!
Ho! the old sea-captain's cheeks glow warm,
And his eyes gleam grim and weird,
As he mutters about, like a thunder-storm,
In the cloud of his beetling beard.