Classic Poem

3. Wrecked.
Hope, hope and love, all shattered for ever!
And I lie, like a corpse I lie here,
Cast out by the sea in its wrath.
On the shore I am lying —
The barren, naked shore.
Before me tumbles the waste of waters;
Behind me lie only misery and sorrow.
And high overhead the clouds are floating,
Grey, shapeless daughters of air,
Who draw up the water in buckets of mist
From the ocean,
And toilsomely drag it and drag it,
And again pour it forth to the sea —
A wearisome, sorrowful task,
And useless as is my life.

The waves are murmuring, the sea-gulls shrieking;
Old recollections breathe on me anew;
Dreams long forgotten, forms that have faded,
Full of sweet torment they rise up again.

There dwells far North a woman,
A fair woman, royally fair.
Slender and tall as a cypress, clad
In raiment of dazzling white;
The raven mass of tresses,
Dark as a night of bliss, streams downward
From the proud head, crowned by a coil of braids,
Enframing softly, sweetly as in dreams,
The face so pale and tender;
And from the face so pale and tender
Shines forth an eye large and subduing
As might be a black sun.

Oh, thou black sun! how many a time
Ecstatic did I drink from thee
The untamed fire of inspiration,
And stood and staggered, drunk with flaming fire;
Then hovered a smile of dove-like gentleness
On the stately curve of the haughty lips;
And the stately curve of the haughty lips
Breathed out words sweet as moonlight
And soft as the breath of roses —
And lo! my spirit spread her wings,
And, eagle-like, flew up to very heaven!

Silence, ye waves and ye sea-gulls!
For all is fled;
Love, too, and hope! On the shore I am lying,
A shipwrecked, desolate man,
And my burning face I bury
In the wet sea-sand.