Ferdinand C. Lane

Moored to the decaying piling Of a ruined wharf, and whiling Endless hours away in dreams of days gone by, Lies a battered hulk, dismasted, Broken backed and tempest blasted, Like a dolphin fast aground and left to die.

Deck awash and planking slanted Like a broken lily planted In the mud, where every tide the eddies swirl, Years have gone since last it floated And the sea growths all unnoted, Underneath its rotting timbers twine and curl.

Often when my footsteps tended To that lonely shore that ended All its voyagings there sounded in my ear, What the shrilling sea birds uttered And the voiceless current muttered Solemn messages it meant for me to hear;

“Far off seas no more beguile me “But their memories reconcile me “To the shelter of this silver mirrored cove “Where my outline seems engraven “Like an etching. Safe in haven “I am home at last, and nevermore shall rove.”

It is harvest time in the teeming sea And the surges labor tirelessly Like toil bent reapers with sickles of foam They garner the harvest and carry it home, Till the beaches throb to the rhythmic beat As they strew it in windrows at our feet.

Slender strands like a whip lash, tear At the cowering sands - ’tis the Dead-Man’s Hair And the rockweed bulges with bulbous lumps All yellow and brown, with the jagged stumps Of kelp stalks wrenched by the undertow From sunken glens where the sea things grow.

Eel grass rolled by the waves at play In fresh cut swaths like the new mown hay; Lettuce that glints with a fragile sheen: And Irish moss with its mottled green And cream and purple and pink and brown From the matted gulfs where sailors drown!

Algae dyed like a fresh blown rose Red is their telltale hue that glows On the white sands edging the brooding sea. A network of delicate imagery Like the thin fine lines of an etching traced That the blundering surges have not erased.

Harvest from tide tilled fields that bloom Deep down where the sunlight fades in gloom. Gardens of sinister mystery Under the waves of the heaving sea. Gardens the living may never know Where dead men drift in the ebb and flow!

Jungles where fishes and creatures strange Through the lush profusion may freely range. Not for the living but for the dead Are those fields submerged that we may not tread, But their harvest is scattered within our reach By the wild waves mourning along the beach.

The music dies upon the strings But lingers on Like other sweetly treasured things Here once - and gone.

The breeze that blurs the mirror pool Cannot erase The outline of the forest cool Upon its face.

The haunting fragrance of the flowers Of yesterday Not all the intervening hours Can steal away.

And loving friends we used to know Nor e’er forget Although they left us long ago Seem with us yet.

Through bushes half obscured, a marble slab Peers out like a pale face. Inscribed upon Its weathered surface that the lichen growth And winter’s storms have blurred, a few brief words The curious eye may spell with labored care. To “H” and “M” - perhaps - and the terse phrase So haunting in its stark simplicity And pathos, - “Lost at sea.” The changeless gulfs Of ocean knew the dead man mentioned here Where bushes riot o’er an empty grave, But what old friend remembers him today? Ofttimes, no doubt, upon the wet sea sand He traced his name in childhood, while the waves Erased the halting script. Another hand Has etched that name in form more durable; But year by year, the ceaseless ebb and flow Of time’s remorseless tides obliterate The letters shrunken to initials faint, And that last solemn statement - “Lost at sea”. Much has been written on the vanity Of human life, but never penned more tense With meaning than this lonely epitaph Set in a thicket on a crumbling stone.

A ridge of sand dunes barricades the rim Of the horizon like a gilded bar To roving sight; a lonely point, the brim Of earth against the moaning surge. Afar My glances wander, wistful, ill at ease From longing to explore those far off seas.

The murmuring tide creeps up before my feet And leaves a shell or two, a broken spray Of strange sea growth; then to some chill retreat In ocean’s depths it slowly ebbs away. How blithely thought can trail the screaming terns Beyond the boundaries that the eye discerns!

On the horizon looms that point beside The pathless main, a prison door to me; For I would follow on that restless tide To lands remote beyond a shoreless sea; Through shimmering haze how like a magic wand That dune ridged finger beckons me beyond!

The rolling hills enclose me and the sky Bends overhead, but these are different things; Somehow they do not seem to press so nigh As that wind fretted wall of sand that rings My little world about, and intervenes To shut my vision from enchanted scenes.

And though in happier days I sailed those seas Around the globe upon the buoyant trades To Ceylon, Singapore and Celebes, Beheld their fanes and trod their tropic glades Those voyages leave me still unsatisfied In this lone cottage where I now abide.

Beyond the point what vistas of romance Of golden kingdoms still their wealth unfold: Though fettered by the bonds of circumstance My failing vision and my limbs grown old Among the embers of my memories One lingering flame, adventure, never dies.