The Hawser

                        I.
   Clinging to the desert rock,
   Where, with shock on thunder-shock,
      Champ the white jaws of the sun,
   Crouch infuriate Neptune’s sons
   O’er the bleak and barren stones —
   Staines of despair in bronze,
Whom wind and wave and halt at once,
      Leah with their scourges three;

   Twixt them and this green home-shore
   Granite-throated whirlpools roar; [?]
      Outcast from a world so near,
   Sadder,  nor less  sure their fate,
   Than if all the desolate
   Breadth of waters swung its gate
Across their push, while grimly sate
      Death there, and Terror here!

   But anon a slender line
   Leaps across the whirling brine,
      Through the wild surf and the roar;
   Now they plunge with heroism
   One by one across the abysm,
   Heedless of their rough baptism;
And the crashed wave is but a prism
   To glorify the shore.

                        II.
   Scattered o’er an alien world
   By the waves of fortune hurled —
      Heart from yearning heart is lost —
   Speechless, fellowless, unknown,
   With no soul anear its own,
   Each upon his bleak rock thrown,
While care, and want, and toil lay on
      Their whips of fire and frost!

   Rest and fellowship are seen
   Just beyond, with bowers of green,
      But between them and their bliss
   Roars the stormy sea of life,
   Waves of work, and glen of strife,
   Friend from friend, and man from wife
Sever, as with a fatal knife,
      Wide off as death’s abyss.

   But soon a weird love-line,
   From the pen, flung strong and fine,
      With its thread of silence  runs
   Through the dash, the roar, and rout;
   Then our stranded thoughts leap out,
   And their white arms wind about
Their happy frères, while life’s mad shout
      Is lull’d to mellow tones.