Frederick Goddard Tuckerman

First Series. 13. As one who walks and weeps by alien brine

As one who walks and weeps by alien brine
And hears the heavy land-wash break, so I,
Apart from friends, remote in misery,
But brood on pain and find in heaven no sign:
The lights are strange, and bitter voices by.
So the doomed sailor, left alone to die,
Looks sadly seaward at the day's decline
And hears his parting comrades' jeers and scoffs
Or sees through mists that hinder and deform
The dewy stars of home, sees Regulus shine
With a hot flicker through the murky damp
And setting Sirius twitch and twinge like a lamp
Slung to the masthead in a night of storm
Of lonely vessel laboring in the troughs.