VI. The Hyphen

I am weary of the ocean, emblem of Eternity.
Boundlessness is too ideal. Time and space suffice to me.
Life at sea is but the shadow of the life we led on land,
And the weary glass of Chronos hardly seems to drop a sand.
Life at sea is life suspended in a Present evermore,
All the Past is dim behind us, all the Future vague before.
’Tis an isthmus leading on from continent to continent,
Where the spirit, worn with waiting, sometimes dreams it is content.
For I dream, cast out from action, nothing more remains to do,
Gazing at the sky and ocean, looking up from blue to blue.
Watching in night’s constellations circles of the wheeling mast,
Nourishing a moody fancy with the visions of the Past;
Or if visions of the Future sometimes dimly glide between,
’Tis when memory shapes the To be, by reversing what has been;
That which was was dark and gloomy, clouds of doubt, and storms of sin,
Till I thought ‘Perchance the outer lends its shade to that within;
But the country which is coming is the home of warmth and light,
And the soul may spread her pinions there more beautifully bright.’
Still I erred; I know that change of climate is not change of soul;
Every ship has care for cargo, wheresoe’er the billows roll,
Where storms toss, or calms entrance her, from the line to either pole.
Let what will be, there is nothing wherewithal I may not cope.
Thus I sing between the lands of disappointment and of hope;
Thus I sing, the night wind freshens in the rigging, loft and low,
Fills the canvass, drives the light spray—on our destined path we go.