Died Abroad

With love’s last pressure in his hand 
He turned his daring keel from land
And sailed into the sunny south
With love’s last kiss upon his mouth;
And when the pale horizon’s rim
Like a shut lif closed over him
We watched the churlish sea in vain,
The sea returns him not again!

Abroad on all the winds that blow
We see the white sails come and go,
Some crusted from the weltering brine
That heaves below the burning line,
And some that under sunless skies
Touched crags of everlasting ice,
Those bearing yet the golden smiles
And fragrance of the spicy Isles,
These proud and buoyant to escape
The terrors of the stormy Cape;
All bringing home some cherished one
To mother, father, wife or son,
Or followed by a thousand tears
Warm prayers & fluttering hopes & fears,
Gone forth to breast the wind and foam,
That love and joy may smile at home;
But not a keel comes back to bear
The form we gave with many a prayer,
And not a pennant streams to show
The heart that loved us beats below.
The treacherous seas no more return
That heart to hearts that o’er them yearn
Save as a cold and pulseless clod
That only seeks its kindred sod.

Far off beneath a foreign sky
Alone he laid him down to die,
Soothed by a strangers hand alone,
A stranger heard his dying moan,
And o’er that eye forever hid
In pity closed the icy lid
And aliens hands were left to fold
The cerements o’er his ashes cold.

In vain for us the southwinds calm
Breathe odours from those isles of balm,
And waft the sea boy to his place
A happy Mother’s fond embrace,
Bring to his love the sailor lad,
The father to his household glad,
New fortune to the fortunate
And good to all who long and wait;
For while the pale moons come and go
Like tender white hopes waning slow,
In vain we wait, we long in vain,
The southwinds bring him not again!

As if at times the sea had caught
The spirit of our saddened thought,
The murmur of the restless surge
Might seem a never-ending dirge,
For one whose tread shall nevermore
Beat its old march along the shore,
The white foam tossing on the wave
Like cerements rustling oer a grave,
And the rocks brine-drops dripping slow
As tears that will not cease to flow!

But moons that still from overhead
Smiled on our hopes and on our dead.
Bring round the hours of bitter grief
And the slow ripening of relief
A day to bow to conquering death,
And years of more triumphant faith.

God o’er that solitary bier
Stoops down as kindly and as near,
As where our prayers of love invoke
His mercy to avert the stroke,
And that which still survives the dust
Not land nor sea can keep in trust.
The links that binds congenial hearts
Nor death nor distance ever parts.
Embalm’d in thought through many a year
His home still holds his memory dear,
And haply so wins back some word
Of cheer half-felt if all unheard,—
Ere launched upon that broader sea
The unsounded deep—Eternity,
We meet, whom here we meet no more
Our SAILOR on its golden shore.