Poems (Shore)/Sea-Visions

by Louisa Catherine Shore

SEA-VISIONS

There was a calm upon the Atlantic Sea;
 My ship lay rolling on its rolling swell,
And with its lurch the sails flapped heavily,
 And then 1t was that a strange chance befell.

All round the horizon was a sunset glow,
 A bank of many-coloured clouds and fair,
And as I watched them gradually grow,
 Of a dim distant speck I was aware.

A something moved towards us o'er the ocean,
 Where naught was but an azure blank before;
And now we marked its undulating motion,
 Now saw a form, and heard the plashing oar.

Closer it came and we beheld a man,
 Whose face as one already dead was pale;
With fixed, stern look he seemed the waves to scan,
 Nor raised his forehead to our sudden hail.

Nor answered he, but down his oars he flung,
 With hollow sound that smote the silent air,
Then from his bench, still sternly mute, he sprung,
 And, scaling the tall shipside, joined us there.

"Bring wine; I thirst," he said in low, deep tone;
 And wine and food we bring, and round him crowd
To hear his tale; yet answer made he none—
 As one enwrapt, till "Oh!" he cried aloud—

"When a great ship goes down into the deep.
 Who, who shall guess how many hearts on shore,
That once prayed for her, groan in agony
 Over the precious load of lives she bore?

"And when unknown her fate, but not unguest,
 Her being is with the invisible,
Who shall portray the yearnings of the breast
 That craves to know what none returns to tell?

"'She shall come back to me, or I will die!'
 So wildly vowed I, as from morn till eve
I looked unto the sea with asking eyes,
 And heart that would not in its loss believe.

"Such my last thought before my head was laid
 Upon a pillow which could long bestow
No rest until, by watching overweighed,
 A sleep came o'er me with its dreams of woe,

"It seemed as if a host of voices blended
 Into a roar of waters round my head,
As, living, into Ocean I descended,
 With frantic search to thread its crowds of dead.

"With conscious eye and ear at length I stood
 Upon firm ground—above me green and clear
I saw the pale light of the glistening flood,
 And its long funeral anthem still could hear.

"On either side behold, a vast arcade
 As 'twere of rock-hewn giants edged my way,
Pillars, whose arches circled with their shade
 Huge doors of adamant wave-worn and grey.

"In the strange ocean vault I stood amazed,
 And listened to a far-off cry of woe:
Affrighted on those dreadful doors I gazed,
 And what they covered feared, yet longed to know.

"'Open!' I cried, and forthwith as I spoke,
 All down the cloistered aisle, without a sound,
As if that desperate cry some spell had broke,
 The chain of each tall portal was unbound;

"And each flew open, offering to reveal
 Its secret to the stranger; but aghast
I paused, half wishing darkness might conceal
 The too stupendous mystery as I past.

"Heaven! how my heart died in me thus to spy
 In one brief glance the secret of the deep;
I entered one, and there—Oh what saw I?
 A human corpse laid out as if in sleep.

"I turned and sought another—still the same,
 A dreamless sleeper on his bed of stone;
Unknown his history, unknown his name,
 The date of his imprisonment unknown.

"And on and on I passed in haste and fear,
 Searching each cave for one belovèd form
And on I passed, and cried 'She is not here!
 Oh, thanks, brave ship! thou hast escaped the storm!'

"But there were creatures fair as even she—
 Roses o'er whose sweet bloom the storm had swept
Whirling them down into the wild, waste sea;
 And, gazing on their loveliness, I wept.

"And there were children laid in childish sleep,
 Each on its pillow with unconscious head,
Children for whom e'en yet their mothers weep,
 And yet will not believe them of the dead.

"And there too the strong sailor with clenched hand
 As if upbraiding cruel ocean still,
That, baffling long despair's wild strife for land,
 Its tortured victim still delayed to kill.

"And some with wounds I stood aghast to view,
 Like vanquished pirates in their wrath, lay there,
And some, like captains murdered by their crew,
 Lay scowling in their impotent despair.

"Those whom the sea with holy rites received
 Slept smiling as if dreaming of the shore,
As if in their fond fancy they believed
 They yet might meet the friends they met no more.

"So on and on I went, until my feet
 Paused suddenly before a door still closed;
It opened—fearing the dead glance to meet,
 I looked—and there the well-known form reposed.

"Composed in look, as she had slept or years
 In her lone burial vault, lay that sweet face.
She knew me not. Eternities of tears
 Would not have washed her from her resting-place.

I would have touched the pale, pale sleeper's hand,
 But something held me back, I knew not what;
Recoiling, by the door I took my stand—
 Heaven, sea, and land, all (save her face) forgot.

"I called her name. She heard not, but the voice
 Of passion with its sudden agony,
Unbound my senses—round me roared the noise
 Of waters and I started from the sea.

"My dream was past, but not the abiding woe
 That weighed upon my being. From the shore
I loosed my boat, with purpose fixed to go
 There only whence I could return no more.

"Now lies my body in its own sea-bed,
 Divorced from which I walk the changeless sea,
Severed alike from living and from dead—
 Stranger! in yonder vaults they wait for thee."

In blank amaze he left us; but not long
 In silence on each other might we gaze,
For dreadful portents now began to throng
 In the black skies, and fear succeeded to amaze.

No man who saw it shall that storm forget—
 Ocean! thy wrath doth pass the wrath of men;
And how I 'scaped thy hold I know not yet—
 Keep my brave ship, wild foe! I tempt thee not again.

 August 31, 1844.

This was almost the last of the poems that have remained in manuscript to which an exact date can be assigned.^[1] The following poems, some of which are headed "Fragments from an Unwritten Novel," range between 1844 and 1849. Several of them were purely fictitious, others were thrown off in passing moods or youthful imaginative feeling. Her dramatising instincts, too, led her to give form and feature to every idea that crossed her; while a taste for emotional poetry and for melancholy themes, as well as a want of belief in happiness in general, led her to an involuntary preference for depicting unrequited and despairing attachment.

Occasional verses, however, during this period were rare; she was mostly occupied in working up her drama of "Hannibal," which was first sketched, as we have mentioned, at the age of twenty, and finished on the same plan some three years after, though it was revised and received its final form previous to publication in 1861.

1. Two sonnets excepted, written in 1855, which will be found at the close of this series.