The Master Mariner’s Song

(Outward Bound) AWAY, away she plunges With her white sails o’er her spread, Like the summer clouds that gather On some hill’s piny head; Still away she plunges rampant Like a lion roused to wrath, And the proud wave lies humbled I’ the track of her path. Ye ho! my gallant sailors Wear her head from off the land: As his steed obeys the Arab How she gives to the hand! And now like a soul the world forsaking, She leaves the coast behind, And the main is her wide dwelling And her spouse is the wind. Then pledge we a full measure To the friends we left to-day, Whose kind wishes hover o’er us On our watery way: Where diurnally remind us Shall the same bright-brimming rite Of the eyes that yearned blessings When last we knew their light! . . . . . The leaf-glancing boughs of the o’erdoming trees Now seem in wild dance to the pipe of the breeze As clashing and clasping in merry despite They mass into shadow or quiver in light, When cut by their motion the slanting moonbeam Falls sifted like coin on the floor of the stream That murmurs thereby like a voice in a dream, Save when the breeze straining in lengthen’d escape Holds open their sprays for a steadier escape, Then too bright fragment of Night’s ripest blue Relieving the leaf-work come transiently through, And broad stars seem glowing as seen amid these Like apples of fire in the tops of the trees!