Page:Poems Piatt.djvu/22

And Two, who waited, dying slow,
 Said, clinging to their desperate calm:
"We had not thought such wind could blow
 Out of the warm leaves of the palm.
Strange, with the Fortunate Isles so nigh—
  Strange, cruel, thus to die."

"The Fortunate Isles?" one other cried;
 "You knew we were not sailing there?
They lie far back across the tide.
 Their cliffs are grey and wet and bare;
"And quiet people in their soil
  Are still content to toil.

"Toward shining snakes, toward fair dumb birds,
 Toward Fever hiding in the spice,
We voyaged." But his tropic words
 Dropped icy upon hearts of ice.
The lonesome gulf to which they passed
  Had shown the Truth at last.

That wavering glare the drowning see,
 With phantoms of their life therein,
Flashed on them both. Yet mostly she
 Felt all her sorrow, all her sin,