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Title: Sea-Gloom
Author: Theophile Gautier [
More Titles by Gautier]
The sea-gulls restless gleam and glance,
The mad white coursers cleave the length
Of ocean as they rear and prance
And toss their manes in stormy strength.
The day is ending. Raindrops choke
The sunset furnaces. The gloom
Brings the great steamboat spitting smoke,
And beating down its long black plume.
And I, more wan than heaven wide,
For land of soot and fog am bound,
For land of smoke and suicide--
And right good weather have I found!
How eagerly I now would pierce
The gulf that groweth wild and hoar!
The vessel rocks. The waves are fierce.
The salt wind freshens more and more.
Ah! bitter is my soul's unrest.
The very ocean sighing heaves
In pity its unhopeful breast,
Like some good friend that knows and grieves.
Let be--lost love's despair supreme!
Let be--illusions fair that rose
And fell from pedestals of dream!
One leap! The dark wet ridges close.
Away! ye sufferings gone by,
That evermore returning brood,
And press the wounds that sleeping lie,
To make them weep afresh their blood.
Away! regret, whose crimson heart
Hath seven swords. Yea, One, maybe,
Doth know the anguish and the smart--
Mother of Seven Sorrows, She!
Each ghostly grief sinks down the vast,
And struggles with the waves that throb
To close about it, and at last
Drown it forever with a sob.
Soul's ballast, treasures of life's hand,
Sink! and we'll wreck together down.
Pale on the pillow of the sand
I'll rest me well at evening brown.
But, now, a woman, as I gaze,
Sits in the bridge's darker nook,
A woman, who doth sweetly raise
Her eyes to mine in one long look.
'T is Sympathy with outstretched arms,
Who smileth to me through the gray
Of dusk with all her thousand charms.
Hail, azure eyes! Green sea, away!
The sea-gulls restless gleam and glance.
The mad white coursers cleave the length
Of Ocean as they rear and prance
And toss their manes in stormy strength.
[The end]
Theophile Gautier's poem: Sea-Gloom
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