Classic Poem

“Sorrow as on the sea.”
O man of grief,
Prophet! who in the troublous time of siege
And famine, when the fierce Chaldean bands
Invaded Israel, didst predict her fate
And feel her vengeance, didst thou ever taste
The sorrow of the sea? Strength reft away,
The spirit melted, hope in darkness lost,
And that eternal loathing, day by day,
Born of those cruel tossings that forbid
The tortured nerve upon its rack to rest,—
For these, thy plaintive harp, that sang so well
Of prison woes, must strike another string.

Thunder upon the main!
Ho, mariner,
For whom the landsman in his happy home
Hath little feeling, mount the shrouds, go up
Into the inky blackness, dare the shaft
Of heaven's red lightning on the pointed mast,
Speck as thou art, which neither sea nor sky
Own, or remember, mid their maniac strife.
The good ship breasts the surge, intent to bide
The battle bravely. Yet, like hunted deer,
It croucheth in the hollow of the sea,
Until the full-mouthed billows drive it forth
Reeling and scathed. Anon, the madden'd winds
Pour out fresh forces, and with riven crest
It rusheth desperate o'er the terraced wave,
Vex'd by their dread artillery. O hearts
Of human mould! that, soften'd by the love.
Of home and kindred, have endured the scourge
Of Ocean's tempests, or upon the wreck,
Week after week, held with untold despair
Gaunt fellowship, ye might a tale unfold
To daunt the dream, and turn the revel pale.

Sorrow as on the sea!
A woman mourns,
Pale as the little marble form she folds
Close in her arms, resisting all who touch
The darling of her bosom.
“'Twill awake;
It hath but fainted. The wild, rocking sea
Hath made it sick. I tell ye 'twill revive.
Child! baby! look on me! 'Twill smile again.”
“Yes, mother, yes! but not below the skies.”
Spasm and convulsion seize her at the thought
That the dear idol, whom but yesterday
She cradled from the zephyr's roughen'd breath,
Alone must to the unfathom'd depths go down,
And for its little body find a bed
Amid the scaly monsters of the deep.
Yet so it is. And she must wend her way
O'er the stern waves that made her desolate,
To her far home again, having let fall
Her soul's chief jewel in the trackless deep.

Sorrow as on the sea!
Ye know it not
Who feel a firm foundation 'neath your feet,
And sleep, unvex'd by waves. Death comes indeed,
But smites you in the sacred place of graves,
Where ye may lay your dead with solemn knell
And tender sympathies of funeral train,
And duly visit them, and dress their couch
With blessed flowers, type of their rising day.
Yea, from the gray-hair'd sexton on his spade,
Bespeak your own turf-pillow where to lie,
And rest beside them, when in God's good time
The pale death-angel comes to summon thee.
True, there is grief on earth. But when ye drain
Its cup of bitterness, give thanks to God
If, in your pilgrimage, ye ne'er have known
The sorrow of the sea.