Page:Poems for the Sea.djvu/20

Are his appliances. No echoing voice
Of Sabbath-bell, across the billowy waste
Calleth the peasant, with his little ones
Up to God's courts; no chant of tuneful choir
Softeneth his pupils, and no fervent prayer
For their misdeeds, from interceding Love
Outlasts the night-watch.
                             Oft indulgent Earth
Fits her frail child for Death's most fear'd embrace,
By holiest ministries around his bed,
Until her loosening links unclasp and fall,
In scarce perceptible, and calm decline,
Without a murmuring moan. And then she opes
Her matron breast, for his long, dreamless sleep,
And covers him with flowers.
                             It is not so
With Ocean, in his sterner discipline.
His tender mercies, are the sad, lone plunge
Down to his caves, where scaly monsters gaze
A moment on the guest, with stony eyes,
Then leave him to an unwept sepulchre,
Until the day of doom.