At Sea by Bliss Carman

As a brave man faces the foe, / Alone against hundreds, and sees Death grin in his teeth, / But, shutting his lips, fights on to the end / Without speech, without hope, without flinching, -- / So, silently, grimly, the steamer / Lurches ahead through the night.

A beacon-light far off, / Twinkling across the waves like a star! / But no star in the dark overhead! / The splash of waters at the prow, and the evil light / Of the death-fires flitting like will-o'-the-wisps beneath! And beyond / Silence and night!

I sit by the taffrail, / Alone in the dark and the blown cold mist and the spray, / Feeling myself swept on irresistibly, / Sunk in the night and the sea, and made one with their footfall-less onrush, / Letting myself be borne like a spar adrift / Helplessly into the night.

Without fear, without wish, / Insensate save of a dull, crushed ache in my heart, / Careless whither the steamer is going, / Conscious only as in a dream of the wet and the dark / And of a form that looms and fades indistinctly / Everywhere out of the night.

O love, how came I here? / Shall I wake at thy side and smile at my dream? / The dream that grips me so hard that I cannot wake nor stir! / O love! O my own love, found but to be lost! / My soul sends over the waters a wild inarticulate cry, / Like a gull's scream heard in the night.

The mist creeps closer. The beacon / Vanishes astern. The sea's monotonous noises / Lapse through the drizzle with a listless, subsiding cadence. / And thou, O love, and the sea throb on in my brain together, / While the steamer plunges along, / Butting its way through the night.