IV. Setting-Out

We parted in the sunshine and the crowd,
The inquisitive gaze of noon; the busy hum
Of man about the port; with strangers by;
And cold Convention, with her tyrant forms,
Removed the solace, and drove home the sting.
We should have sundered on a lonely shore,
Where slowly broadened o’er a misty sea
The shimmer of a large, low-lying moon;
My vessel should have loomed against the night,
Nor shown impatience but by one flapped sail,
And in that hour we should have known a noise
Of water crawling gently up the stones,
And falling softly back with silver sound.
Such noise I hear; not now, tho’ tones of night
There are, which, in unquestioned diapason,
Accompany the murmurs of my soul.
By daylight nature jarred with jangling keys,
But now, all mingles well, the sounds are sad,
And I am sad to find myself alone.
So, standing hand in hand upon the beach
We should have parted, you gone back—ah me!—
To your sweet home, to muse upon the past,
I, to my Destiny beyond the sea,
With a heart touched, not torn, beyond a cure.