If murmurs of the ocean shell
Reveal a memory of its home,
The whisper of the pine, as well,
Might seem a prophecy to tell
In what a hum of wave and foam
Its limbless torso yet shall roam.
The stately empress of the hills,
Or glory of the wooded vales,
From the wild sea the wild wind fills
Its bosom, that responsive thrills,
With stormy runes, and hero tales
Of Vikings toying with the gales.
“Come forth!” the chartless Rover cries;
“My tireless wing will bear thee far
To regions of unclouded skies,
Calm seas aglow with Orient dyes,
And where below the unmoving star
The revels of Valhalla are.
“This thraldom to ignoble earth
My breath shall teach thee to disdain,
Till strong in thy heroic worth,
Escaped the bondage of thy birth,
Right well thy knitted thews shall strain
To wrestle with the hurricane.
“Better, white-winged, to cleave the air
And courtesy to the veering blast,
Or even with the naked arms to dare
The waltzing cyclone in its lair,
Victorious, or a splintered mast,
Than useless here to rot at last!
“O’er pinnacles of glittering ice –
The polar Viking’s pirate fleet,
Where death sits throwing loaded dice
For living stakes of nameless price,
I’ll bend thy nodding crest to greet
The spectre with a hail discreet.
“Where hushed I drink the slumb’rous balm
Of tropic seas, thy arrowy form
Shall see its pictured self as calm
Below thee, as the sleeping palm
That o’er the dead lagoon droops warm,
Oblivious of my scourging storm.
“The murmer of the feathery limbs,
I bring from woodless Manisees,
Mixed with the louder moan that swims
Where autumn’s curdling vapor dims
The storm-beleagured Hebrides,
While gray November strips the trees.
“Now shed thy plumes and don thy shrouds,
A gallant bark thy coming waits;
Lift cloudy wings to meet the clousd,
By quays where busy commerce crowds,
And I will waft thee through the gates
Of noble use to nobler fates!”
A year of action can outweigh
An age of indolent repose,
Whole slow half-century of decay,
But wears the worthless bulk to clay;
Life serving life immortal grows,
And shuns an ignominious close!
George Shepard Burleigh
