Ship's Glamour

When there wakes any wind to shake this place, This wave-hemmed atom of land on which I dwell, My fancy conquers time, condition, space, - A trivial sound begets a miracle! Last night there walked a wind, and, through chink, It made one pan upon another clink Where each hung close together on a nail - Then fantasy put forth her fullest sail; A dawn that never dies came back to me: I heard two ship's bells echoing far at sea! As perfect as a poet dreams a star It was a full-rigged ship bore down the wind, Piled upward with white-crowding spar on spar: The wonder of it never leaves my mind. We passed her moving proudly far at sea; Night was not quite yet gone, nor day begun; She stood, a phantom of sheer loveliness, Against the first flush of an ocean dawn; Then at the elevation of the sun, Her ship's bell faintly sounded the event, While ours with a responding tinkle went. The beauty life evokes, outlasting men, It fills my world from sea to sky again; It opens on me like a shining scroll - The ghost of God that ever haunts the soul!