“My Ancient ship upon my Ancient sea”

July 1836 My Ancient ship upon my Ancient sea ¹ Begins another voyage—Nay thourt gone But wither pending? who is gone with thee? Since parted from thee I am left alone Unknowing what My Rovers ² fate may be Into Its native world of tempests thrown Lost like a speck from my diverted eye Which wilder mightier visions must survey Lost and unnoticed—far away the roar Of Southern Waters breaking to the wind With restless thunder rolling still before As the wild gale sweeps wilder on behind ³ And every vision of old Afric’s shore As much forgot and vanished out of mind As the wild track though[sic] markedst so long ago From those eternal waves which surge below Gone—tis a word which through lifes troubled waste Seems always coming and the only one Which can be called the PRESENT. Hope is past And Hate and strife and love and peace are gone Before we think them for their rapid haste Scarce gives us time for one short smile or groan Ere that thought dies and new ones come between It and our heart with some as fleeting scene And yet there is or seems at least to be A general hue of thought that colours all So though each one be different all agree In the same Melancholy shade like pall Even as the shadows look the same to me Though cast I know from many a varying wall In this Vast city—Hut and Temple ⁴ sharing In the same light and the same darkness wearing Not that I deem All life a course of Shade Nor all the world a maze of streets like these From youth to age a mighty change is made As from this City to the Southern Seas For years through youthful hope our course is laid For years in sloth a sea without a breeze For years amid the stir of civil jar For years within some silent, sleepless care Changing and still the same yet swiftly passing Tis here tis there tis nowhere oh my soul Is there no rest from such a fruitless chasing Of the wild dreams that ever round thee roll Each as it comes the parting thought defacing Yet—all still hurrying to the selfsame goal Gone ere I catch them but their path alone Stretching afar toward one for ever gone! What have I written—nothing for tis over And seems as nothing in the single cloud That shadows it and long has seemed to Hover Oer all the crossing thoughts that ever flowd In this wrecked spirit Oh my ocean Rover Well mayst thou plough the deep so free and proud Thou bearst the uniting tie of ceasless dreams The fount, the confluence of a thousand streams I do not see myself again A wanderer oer the Atlantic main I do not Backward turn my eye Toward sleepless sea and stormy sky Oh no these vanished visions rest In far woodlands of the west And there let Hesperus ⁵ arise To watch my treasure where it lies The present scenes the present clime 28 Forbid the Dreams of olden time 28 The present thoughts the present hour 56 Are rife with Deeds of sterner power 14 And who shall be my leading star 70 +Amid the howling storm of war. 25 95 ⁶ Hark Listen to the Distant Gun From the Battle feild of Edwardston It breaks upon the awful roar Which stuns my ears around And oh the shout of Victory Strikes with a Hollow sound ⁷ My struggles all are crowned with power And fortune gives a glorious hour Men who hate me kneel before me Men who kneel are forced to adore me My Name is on a million tongues The Million babbles of my wrongs And Twenty years of Tyrant pride Which strove this Modem God to hide At last have vanished in the rays Of his unquenched unclouded blaze Oh is not Jesus come again Over his thousand saints to reign While sin and Satan vainly spit Their venomed fury <from> the pit Where they may lie for<gotten> Till Heaven descends in <judgement down> Their reign is past their power <oerthrown> ⁸ For fallen is Mighty Babylon