Classic Poem

I lay upon a rock that jutted to the sea.
Twilight came down out of the pine-woods back of me,
And, stealing on the waters, met the sudden moon,
Rushed into her kiss, and sank to a dead white swoon.
Then forthwith all the ocean's flat marmorean floor
Ran to a silver flux and melted to the shore.
The light was an eddy of day back hither swirled
(The haunting ghost of light from the tomb of a world),
That made all the skied amphitheater a scene
Of mystery in shadow and glory in sheen.
I lay there on the rock and thought of all had been,
I lay and watched my ships come in, my ships come in.

Sail, O ships! my home-voyaging ships!
Sail from the sunlit side of the world;
Climb the watery bulge of the globe;
Pass the line where the orient dips
In the sea, and, with canvas unfurled,
Take yon moon's glory on as a robe:
From wherever your sailing has been,
Sail, ships, hither, sail hither, sail in.

Ship! that flew out of port with thy wings
Dipt in morning, is yon phantom thou—
Moonlit phantom that drifts to the strand
And no freight and no passenger brings?
Yet see! one there alive on the prow,
In his gaze the sick hunger for land:
Hope! my Captain! that sailed out to win
All our world—conquered Captain, sail in.

Ship! that pushed to the tropical zone,
Touched spice-islands in summery seas,
Then, in mad equatorial gales,
Went adrift with one mariner lone—
Bring him back from the sunned Caribbees,
Bring him in with thy storm-tattered sails:
Love! my Sailor! once life's happy twin,
Now sweet ghost of life, specter! sail in.

Ship! that steered for the boreal stars,
And, bewitched by the weird northern lights,
Cramped through ice-packs and wintered in snows
Heaped to the deck and piled to the spars,
Thou hast brought from the long arctic nights
Only one, and him famished and froze:
Fame! my Helmsman! Anatomy thin
Propt to the wheel, stark Helmsman, sail in.

Ship! that went out to traffic with Ind,
Hugged the Gold Coast, and doubled Good Hope,
When full sail on the Asian sea,
Thou wast caught by a contrary wind
And blown down the world's southerly slope
And thence upward and hither to me:
Ship, whose lading did never begin,
With this moonshine for cargo! sail in.

Ship! that searched round the world for new lands,
Sounded new seas and charted new skies,
Studied new stars, new sights of the sun,
Then plowed keel in the ooze and the sands—
There in shallows thy mystery lies,
When all the deeps thy sailing has done;
Psyche wove but the Parcae did spin
Warp and woof of thy sail sailing in.

Ship! that struck the horizon's sea-line
And there vanished away in the blue,
Seemed that thy sail went into the sky,
And not down the east ocean's decline:
Is naught, then, but the underworld true,
And yon overworld naught but a lie?
Faith! my Anchor! all rusted with sin,
There on deck of this ship sailing in!

Then, as I lay there with the sick soul in my eyes,
A thundercloud that had loomed up the western skies
Went suddenly across the moon and made eclipse
That blotted all the sea and those assembling ships.