Sir Humphrey Gilbert
Southward with fleet of ice
Sailed the corsair Death;
Wild and gast blew the blast,
And the east-wind was his breath.
His lordly ships of ice
Glisten in the sun;
On each side, like pennons wide,
Flashing crystal streamlets run.
His sails of white sea-mist
Dripped with silver rain;
But where he passed there were cast
Leaden shadows o’er the main.
Eastward from Campobello
Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed;
Three days or more seaward he bore,
Then, alas! the land-wind failed.
Alas! the land-wind failed,
And ice-cold grew the night;
And nevermore, on sea or shore,
Should Sir Humphrey see the light.
He sat upon the deck,
The Book was in his hand;
“Do not fear! Heaven is as near,”
He said, “by water as by land!”
In the first watch of the night,
Without a signal’s sound,
Out of the sea, mysteriously,
The fleet of Death rose all around.
The moon and the evening star
Were hanging in the shrouds;
Every mast, as it passed,
Seemed to rake the passing clouds.
They grappled with their prize,
At midnight black and cold!
As of a rock was the shock;
Heavily the ground-swell rolled.
Southward through day and dark,
They drift in cold embrace,
With mist and rain, o’er the open main;
Yet there seems no change of place.
Southward, forever southward,
They drift through dark and day;
And like a dream, in the Gulf-Stream
Sinking, vanish all away.
Related poetry:
- Botany Bay Eclogues 03 – Humphrey And William (Time, Noon.) HUMPHREY: See’st thou not William that the scorching Sun By this time half his daily race has run? The savage thrusts his light canoe to shore And hurries homeward with his fishy store. Suppose we leave awhile this stubborn soil To eat our dinner and to rest from toil! WILLIAM: Agreed. Yon tree […]...
- Gilbert I. THE GARDEN. ABOVE the city hung the moon, Right o’er a plot of ground Where flowers and orchard-trees were fenced With lofty walls around: ‘Twas Gilbert’s gardenthere, to-night Awhile he walked alone; And, tired with sedentary toil, Mused where the moonlight shone. This garden, in a city-heart, Lay still as houseless wild, Though many-windowed […]...
- The Lost Heifer When the black herds of the rain were grazing, In the gap of the pure cold wind And the watery hazes of the hazel Brought her into my mind, I thought of the last honey by the water That no hive can find. Brightness was drenching through the branches When she wandered again, Turning sliver […]...
- An Empty Threat I stay; But it isn’t as if There wasn’t always Hudson’s Bay And the fur trade, A small skiff And a paddle blade. I can just see my tent pegged, And me on the floor, Cross-legged, And a trapper looking in at the door With furs to sell. His name’s Joe, Alias John, And between […]...
- How Gilbert Died There’s never a stone at the sleeper’s head, There’s never a fence beside, And the wandering stock on the grave may tread Unnoticed and undenied; But the smallest child on the Watershed Can tell you how Gilbert died. For he rode at dusk with his comrade Dunn To the hut at the Stockman’s Ford; In […]...
- From The Shore A LONE gray bird, Dim-dipping, far-flying, Alone in the shadows and grandeurs and tumults Of night and the sea And the stars and storms. Out over the darkness it wavers and hovers, Out into the gloom it swings and batters, Out into the wind and the rain and the vast, Out into the pit of […]...
- Winter Song Rain and wind, and wind and rain. Will the Summer come again? Rain on houses, on the street, Wetting all the people’s feet, Though they run with might and main. Rain and wind, and wind and rain. Snow and sleet, and sleet and snow. Will the Winter never go? What do beggar children do With […]...
- Cobwebs It is a land with neither night nor day, Nor heat nor cold, nor any wind, nor rain, Nor hills nor valleys; but one even plain Stretches thro’ long unbroken miles away: While thro’ the sluggish air a twilight grey Broodeth; no moons or seasons wax and wane, No ebb and flow are there among […]...
- The Rainy Day The day is cold, and dark, and dreary It rains, and the wind is never weary; The vine still clings to the mouldering wall, But at every gust the dead leaves fall, And the day is dark and dreary. My life is cold, and dark, and dreary; It rains, and the wind is never weary; […]...
- A March Day in London The east wind blows in the street to-day; The sky is blue, yet the town looks grey. ‘Tis the wind of ice, the wind of fire, Of cold despair and of hot desire, Which chills the flesh to aches and pains, And sends a fever through all the veins. From end to end, with aimless […]...
- When that I was and a little tiny boy When that I was and a little tiny boy, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, A foolish thing was but a toy, For the rain it raineth every day. But when I came to man’s estate, With hey, ho, . . . ‘Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate For the rain, […]...
- The Fire of Drift-wood DEVEREUX FARM, NEAR MARBLEHEAD. We sat within the farm-house old, Whose windows, looking o’er the bay, Gave to the sea-breeze damp and cold, An easy entrance, night and day. Not far away we saw the port, The strange, old-fashioned, silent town, The lighthouse, the dismantled fort, The wooden houses, quaint and brown. We sat and […]...
- Lydia Humphrey Back and forth, back and forth, to and from the church, With my Bible under my arm Till I was gray and old; Unwedded, alone in the world, Finding brothers and sisters in the congregation, And children in the church. I know they laughed and thought me queer. I knew of the eagle souls that […]...
- Night Journey Now as the train bears west, Its rhythm rocks the earth, And from my Pullman berth I stare into the night While others take their rest. Bridges of iron lace, A suddenness of trees, A lap of mountain mist All cross my line of sight, Then a bleak wasted place, And a lake below my […]...
- 465. Song-It was a' for our rightfu' King IT was a’ for our rightfu’ King We left fair Scotland’s strand; It was a’ for our rightfu’ King We e’er saw Irish land, my dear, We e’er saw Irish land. Now a’ is done that men can do, And a’ is done in vain; My Love and Native Land fareweel, For I maun cross […]...
- Jugurtha How cold are thy baths, Apollo! Cried the African monarch, the splendid, As down to his death in the hollow Dark dungeons of Rome he descended, Uncrowned, unthroned, unattended; How cold are thy baths, Apollo! How cold are thy baths, Apollo! Cried the Poet, unknown, unbefriended, As the vision, that lured him to follow, With […]...
- Branches The long beautiful night of the wind and rain in April, The long night hanging down from the drooping branches of the top of a birch tree, Swinging, swaying, to the wind for a partner, to the rain for a partner. What is the humming, swishing thing they sing in the morning now? The rain, […]...
- Rain Roads not yet glistening, rain slight, Broken clouds darken after thinning away. Where they drift, purple cliffs blacken. And beyond white birds blaze in flight. Sounds of cold-river rain grown familiar, Autumn sun casts moist shadows. Below Our brushwood gate, out to dry at the village Mill: hulled rice, half-wet and fragrant...
- In The Moonlight “O lonely workman, standing there In a dream, why do you stare and stare At her grave, as no other grave where there?” “If your great gaunt eyes so importune Her soul by the shine of this corpse-cold moon, Maybe you’ll raise her phantom soon!” “Why, fool, it is what I would rather see Than […]...
- A Spell before Winter After the red leaf and the gold have gone, Brought down by the wind, then by hammering rain Bruised and discolored, when October’s flame Goes blue to guttering in the cusp, this land Sinks deeper into silence, darker into shade. There is a knowledge in the look of things, The old hills hunch before the […]...
- The Jumblies I They went to sea in a Sieve, they did, In a Sieve they went to sea: In spite of all their friends could say, On a winter’s morn, on a stormy day, In a Sieve they went to sea! And when the Sieve turned round and round, And every one cried, ‘You’ll all be […]...
- Burning Drift-Wood Before my drift-wood fire I sit, And see, with every waif I burn, Old dreams and fancies coloring it, And folly’s unlaid ghosts return. O ships of mine, whose swift keels cleft The enchanted sea on which they sailed, Are these poor fragments only left Of vain desires and hopes that failed? Did I not […]...
- The Tree of Scarlet Berries The rain gullies the garden paths And tinkles on the broad sides of grass blades. A tree, at the end of my arm, is hazy with mist. Even so, I can see that it has red berries, A scarlet fruit, Filmed over with moisture. It seems as though the rain, Dripping from it, Should be […]...
- She Weeps over Rahoon Rain on Rahoon falls softly, softly falling, Where my dark lover lies. Sad is his voice that calls me, sadly calling, At grey moonrise. Love, hear thou How soft, how sad his voice is ever calling, Ever unanswered, and the dark rain falling, Then as now. Dark too our hearts, O love, shall lie and […]...
- Ultima Thule: Dedication to G. W. G With favoring winds, o’er sunlit seas, We sailed for the Hesperides, The land where golden apples grow; But that, ah! that was long ago. How far, since then, the ocean streams Have swept us from that land of dreams, That land of fiction and of truth, The lost Atlantis of our youth! Whither, ah, whither? […]...
- A Song Of Winter Weather It isn’t the foe that we fear; It isn’t the bullets that whine; It isn’t the business career Of a shell, or the bust of a mine; It isn’t the snipers who seek To nip our young hopes in the bud: No, it isn’t the guns, And it isn’t the Huns It’s the MUD, MUD, […]...
- Mourning Alas my brother! the cry of the mourners of old That cried on each other, All crying aloud on the dead as the death-note rolled, Alas my brother! As flashes of dawn that mists from an east wind smother With fold upon fold, The past years gleam that linked us one with another. Time sunders […]...
- The House Of Dust: Part 04: 07: The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light. The trees grow dark: the shadows lean to the east: And lights wink out through the windows, one by one. A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at the night. Pale slate-grey clouds whirl up from the sunken sun. And the wandering one, the inquisitive […]...
- The House Of Dust: Part 01: 01: The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light. The trees grow dark: the shadows lean to the east: And lights wink out through the windows, one by one. A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at the night. Pale slate-grey clouds whirl up from the sunken sun. And the wandering one, the inquisitive […]...
- Now Returned Home Beyond the narrows of the Inner Hebrides We sailed the cold angry sea toward Barra, where Heaval mountain Lifts like a mast. There were few people on the steamer, it was late in the year; I noticed most an old shepherd, Two wise-eyed dogs wove anxious circles around his feet, and a thin-armed girl Who […]...
- John Ericsson Day Memorial, 1918 INTO the gulf and the pit of the dark night, the cold night, there is a man goes into the dark and the cold and when he comes back to his people he brings fire in his hands and they remember him in the years afterward as the fire bringer-they remember or forget-the man whose […]...
- Marengo Out of the sump rise the marigolds. From the rim of the marsh, muslin with mosquitoes, Rises the egret, in his cloud-cloth. Through the soft rain, like mist, and mica, The withered acres of moss begin again. When I have to die, I would like to die On a day of rain Long rain, slow […]...
- Land, Ho! I know ’tis but a loom of land, Yet is it land, and so I will rejoice, I know I cannot hear His voice Upon the shore, nor see Him stand; Yet is it land, ho! land. The land! the land! the lovely land! ‘Far off,’ dost say? Far off-ah, blessиd home! Farewell! farewell! thou […]...
- The great journalist in spain Good editor Dana God bless him, we say Will soon be afloat on the main, Will be steaming away Through the mist and the spray To the sensuous climate of Spain. Strange sights shall he see in that beautiful land Which is famed for its soap and its Moor, For, as we understand, The scenery […]...
- The Too-Late Born We too, we too, descending once again The hills of our own land, we too have heard Far off – Ah, que ce cor a longue haleine – The horn of Roland in the passages of Spain, The first, the second blast, the failing third, And with the third turned back and climbed once more […]...
- Dan EARLY May, after cold rain the sun baffling cold wind. Irish setter pup finds a corner near the cellar door, all sun and no wind, Cuddling there he crosses forepaws and lays his skull Sideways on this pillow, dozing in a half-sleep, Browns of hazel nut, mahogany, rosewood, played off against each other on his […]...
- Mist Forms THE SHEETS of night mist travel a long valley. I know why you came at sundown in a scarf mist. What was it we touched asking nothing and asking all? How many times can death come and pay back what we saw? In the oath of the sod, the lips that swore, In the oath […]...
- Thangbrand the Priest Short of stature, large of limb, Burly face and russet beard, All the women stared at him, When in Iceland he appeared. “Look!” they said, With nodding head, “There goes Thangbrand, Olaf’s Priest.” All the prayers he knew by rote, He could preach like Chrysostome, From the Fathers he could quote, He had even been […]...
- The Wreck of the Indian Chief ‘Twas on the 8th of January 1881, That a terrific gale along the English Channel ran, And spread death and disaster in its train, Whereby the “Indian Chief” vessel was tossed on the raging main. She was driven ashore on the Goodwin Sands, And the good captain fearlessly issued hie commands, “Come, my men, try […]...
- Wash of Cold River Wash of cold river In a glacial land, Ionian water, Chill, snow-ribbed sand, Drift of rare flowers, Clear, with delicate shell – Like leaf enclosing Frozen lily-leaf, Camellia texture, Colder than a rose; Wind-flower That keeps the breath Of the north-wind These and none other; Intimate thoughts and kind Reach out to share The treasure […]...