I saw as brain-blurred drunkards see; I felt, yet could not feel; I seemed in moving time to be In nerveless immobility As dust upon a wheel.
Some world material moved around, Mazed breadths of spume and brine; Strange voices spake as from a bound Far off, I answered with a sound, Nor knew the answer mine; And sometimes like a weary hound I heard the darkness whine.
In throbbing night 'twixt sleep and sleep My tortured spirit heard A wail that wandered down the deep, A sorrow on the windy deep Wail like a wounded bird; And I wept as a haunted man doth weep Who dare not speak a word.
Sometimes I sensed heaven's bellied gloom, Storm like dumb and pregnant doom Scowl on the waters wild; Or tempest 'neath a plunging sky Down crashing waves with haunting cry Scream like a tortured child;
A blind thing staggering in the night Strained, groaning, 'gainst a pervious power That flashed and eddied, wild and white, That wheeled and wailed from hour to hour; And, somewhere, strangely burned to sight Dawn like a doom a-flower ...
On ever onward, darkly driven, A soul, unsheltered, and unshriven, With lodestar gone, with raiment riven, Drove in the gale of the wrath of Heaven ...
The monsoon blew; the changing stars Rode by in deeper skies. At times between the raking spars I felt the blank moon rise; Or heard the chanties of the tars With a sad, sick surprise.
And once a heaven, the sapphire's hue, Flashed o'er the freshening wave; They hurt the heart as laughers do When love stands by a grave.
And now a level ocean grey Would lie along a level day, Unwhipt of wing or wind; Or sunset make a carmine stain That sucked like sadness at the brain, And sank into the mind, And touched me with some wandering pain, Some sentience of mankind again.
... And where was _she_?... Could sorrow fail In aching time ... Ah voice in vain That called for ever ... fading sail On seas forlorn; sad wind and rain Whispering ... all-wandering pain ... And in the heart the wail-- Never again on earth--never again.
So dimly to a beauteous ghost My being bowed a subject knee, And lived, with love's sad sunset lost, Alone 'mid all the sea. A leper to a lonely coast, I fled from all I cherished most; And wildly, with a bleeding boast, I clasped my agony ...