| |
| A BATTER’D, wreck’d old man | |
| Thrown on this savage shore, far, far from home, | |
| Pent by the sea and dark rebellious brows, twelve dreary months, | |
| Sore, stiff with many toils, sicken’d and nigh to death, | |
| I take my way along the island’s edge, | 5 |
| Venting a heavy heart. | |
| |
| I am too full of woe! | |
| Haply I may not live another day; | |
| I cannot rest O God, I cannot eat or drink or sleep, | |
| Till I put forth myself, my prayer, once more to Thee, | 10 |
| Breathe, bathe myself once more in Thee, commune with Thee, | |
| Report myself once more to Thee. | |
| |
| Thou knowest my years entire, my life, | |
| My long and crowded life of active work, not adoration merely; | |
| Thou knowest the prayers and vigils of my youth, | 15 |
| Thou knowest my manhood’s solemn and visionary meditations, | |
| Thou knowest how before I commenced I devoted all to come to Thee, | |
| Thou knowest I have in age ratified all those vows and strictly kept them, | |
| Thou knowest I have not once lost nor faith nor ecstasy in Thee, | |
| In shackles, prison’d, in disgrace, repining not, | 20 |
| Accepting all from Thee, as duly come from Thee. | |
| |
| All my emprises have been fill’d with Thee, | |
| My speculations, plans, begun and carried on in thoughts of Thee, | |
| Sailing the deep or journeying the land for Thee; | |
| Intentions, purports, aspirations mine, leaving results to Thee. | 25 |
| O I am sure they really came from Thee, | |
| The urge, the ardor, the unconquerable will, | |
| The potent, felt, interior command, stronger than words, | |
| A message from the Heavens whispering to me even in sleep, | |
| These sped me on. | 30 |
| |
| By me and these the work so far accomplish’d, | |
| By me earth’s elder cloy’d and stifled lands uncloy’d, unloos’d, | |
| By me the hemispheres rounded and tied, the unknown to the known. | |
| |
| The end I know not, it is all in Thee, | |
| Or small or great I know not—haply what broad fields, what lands, | 35 |
| Haply the brutish measureless human undergrowth I know, | |
| Transplanted there may rise to stature, knowledge worthy Thee, | |
| Haply the swords I know may there indeed be turn’d to reaping-tools, | |
| Haply the lifeless cross I know, Europe’s dead cross, may bud and blossom there. | |
| |
| One effort more, my altar this bleak sand; | 40 |
| That Thou O God my life hast lighted, | |
| With ray of light, steady, ineffable, vouchsafed of Thee, | |
| Light rare untellable, lighting the very light, | |
| Beyond all signs, descriptions, languages; | |
| For that O God, be it my latest word, here on my knees, | 45 |
| Old, poor, and paralyzed, I thank Thee. | |
| |
| My terminus near, | |
| The clouds already closing in upon me, | |
| The voyage balk’d, the course disputed, lost, | |
| I yield my ships to Thee. | 50 |
| |
| My hands, my limbs grow nerveless, | |
| My brain feels rack’d, bewilder’d, | |
| Let the old timbers part, I will not part, | |
| I will cling fast to Thee, O God, though the waves buffet me, | |
| Thee, Thee at least I know. | 55 |
| |
| Is it the prophet’s thought I speak, or am I raving? | |
| What do I know of life? what of myself? | |
| I know not even my own work past or present, | |
| Dim ever-shifting guesses of it spread before me, | |
| Of newer better worlds, their mighty parturition, | 60 |
| Mocking, perplexing me. | |
| |
| And these things I see suddenly, what mean they? | |
| As if some miracle, some hand divine unseal’d my eyes, | |
| Shadowy vast shapes smile through the air and sky, | |
| And on the distant waves sail countless ships, | 65 |
| And anthems in new tongues I hear saluting me. | |
| |
