Like a tide that runs increasing,
Bearing ships to port again,
There's a tide that brings unceasing
Pleasures to my restless brain.
When at night I sit and swinging
Idly to a strain of thought,
Then it flows, resistless, bringing
Countless tales with pleasure fraught.
And it seems as though the olden
Stories of the mystic sea
Came like ships to bear their golden,
Precious cargoes unto me.
For I hail with deep emotion
All those gray and ghostly forms,
Phantoms of the shoreless ocean
That is swept by constant storms.
And I see from mist-enshrouded,
Ancient, half-forgotten tales
Galleons rise, and memory clouded,
Pass with faint and formless sails.
Others come, the tall and splendid
Monarchs of the oaken side,
Who, with master arms, contended
For the empire of the tide.
One by one they pass in glory--
Stately shapes that led the van--
Builders of the ocean's story,
Noblest gift of man to man.
And not less the worn and shattered,
Drifting, find my port at last.
All the stranded, stove, and battered
Victims of the wave and blast,
They are mine by right of capture:
Buccaneer and ship of plate;
And I search their holds with rapture
Till the night grows cold and late;
Till the moon, high-prowed and dipping,
Like a ship of ancient worth,
Leaves her cloudy port and slipping,
Spins her wake across the earth.
And the wind, to peace consenting,
Breathes a hymn above the land;
And the ocean, half repenting,
Kneels in prayer along the sand.