In the city of tents, by the restless sea,
My sailor-lad long has dwelt,
Since Fate has put forth her dark decree,
And strangely our children’s future is spelt,
By the horrors of things to be.
And I think, in his heart he begins to know
The meaning which glamor obscured,
For his words are like cups that overflow
With things which he has endured,
Though never just saying so.
For he is as brave, and more I ween,
Than many a fellow-lad,
And courage excels in his cheerful mien,
He even tries to make others glad,
This sailor of seventeen.
But a letter arrived, the other day,
To his little sister of seven,
To whom he wrote in a childlike way
Of things in a vision given,
And this is what he did say:--
“I stood on the shore of the moonlit lake,
Where the billows came rolling high,
The sound of the sea did my soul awake
To the breaker’s music and westwinds sigh
And to musings of my own make.”
“Methought I saw on the whitecapped waves
My dear ones come to me,--
For the heart perceives what most it craves,
On the world’s dark, turbulent sea,
The sea of clamoring waves.”
“And I saw you dance on the foamy crest,
Like a Naiad or spirit fair,
And mother and all whom I love best
Did beckon to me out there,
In the wind from the plains of the west.”
“And I called on you all by your dearest name,
As lonely I stood that night,
But none of you heard me, and none of you came,
But vanished full soon from my sight,
Like the sheen of a dying flame.”
“And it may have been the mist from the spray,
Or something like that which blurred
My eyes as I tried to look away,
And only the moan of the billows I heard,
As they came in a wild array.”
“I went to my little tent in the camp,
All cold in the April night,
My bed was cheerless and chill and damp,
And my heart was heavy as I did write,
In the light of the sky’s bright lamp.”