Read "The Sailor's Wife" by Lewis Carroll online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
/ See! There are tears upon her face -- / Tears newly shed, and scarcely dried: / Close, in an agonised embrace, / She clasps the infant at her side.
/ Peace dwells in those soft-lidded eyes, / Those parted lips that faintly smile -- / Peace, the foretaste of Paradise, / In heart too young for care or guile.
/ No peace that mother's features wear; / But quivering lip, and knotted brow, / And broken mutterings, all declare / The fearful dream that haunts her now.
/ The storm-wind, rushing through the sky, / Wails from the depths of cloudy space; / Shrill, piercing as the seaman's cry / When death and he are face to face.
/ Familiar tones are in the gale: / They ring upon her startled ear: / And quick and low she pants the tale / That tells of agony and fear:
/ "Still that phantom-ship is nigh -- / With a vexed and life-like motion, / All beneath an angry sky, / Rocking on an angry ocean.
/ "Round the straining mast and shrouds / Throng the spirits of the storm: / Darkly seen through driving clouds, / Bends each gaunt and ghastly form.
/ "See! The good ship yields at last! / Dumbly yields, and fights no more; / Driving, in the frantic blast, / Headlong on the fatal shore.
/ "Hark! I hear her battered side, / With a low and sullen shock, / Dashed, amid the foaming tide, / Full upon a sunken rock.
/ "His face shines out against the sky, / Like a ghost, so cold and white; / With a dead despairing eye / Gazing through the gathered night.
/ "Is he watching, through the dark / Where a mocking ghostly hand / Points a faint and feeble spark / Glimmering from the distant land?
/ "Sees he, in this hour of dread, / Hearth and home and wife and child? / Loved ones who, in summers fled, / Clung to him and wept and smiled?
/ "Reeling sinks the fated bark / To her tomb beneath the wave: / Must he perish in the dark -- / Not a hand stretched out to save?
/ "See the spirits, how they crowd! / Watching death with eyes that burn! / Waves rush in -- -- " she shrieks aloud, / Ere her waking sense return.
/ The storm is gone: the skies are clear: / Hush'd is that bitter cry of pain: / The only sound, that meets her ear, / The heaving of the sullen main.
/ Though heaviness endure the night, / Yet joy shall come with break of day: / She shudders with a strange delight -- / The fearful dream is pass'd away.
/ She wakes: the grey dawn streaks the dark: / With early song the copses ring: / Far off she hears the watch-dog bark / A joyful bark of welcoming!