The Aeolian Harp

_At The Surf Inn_ List the harp in window wailing Stirred by fitful gales from sea: Shrieking up in mad crescendo-- Dying down in plaintive key! Listen: less a strain ideal Than Ariel's rendering of the Real. What that Real is, let hint A picture stamped in memory's mint. Braced well up, with beams aslant, Betwixt the continents sails the _Phocion,_ For Baltimore bound from Alicant. Blue breezy skies white fleeces fleck Over the chill blue white-capped ocean: From yard-arm comes--'Wreck ho, a wreck!' Dismasted and adrift, Longtime a thing forsaken; Overwashed by every wave Like the slumbering kraken; Heedless if the billow roar, Oblivious of the lull, Leagues and leagues from shoal or shore, It swims--a levelled hull: Bulwarks gone--a shaven wreck, Nameless and a grass-green deck. A lumberman: perchance, in hold Prostrate pines with hemlocks rolled. It has drifted, waterlogged, Till by trailing weeds beclogged: Drifted, drifted, day by day, Pilotless on pathless way. It has drifted till each plank Is oozy as the oyster-bank: Drifted, drifted, night by night, Craft that never shows a light; Nor ever, to prevent worse knell, Tolls in fog the warning bell. From collision never shrinking, Drive what may through darksome smother; Saturate, but never sinking, Fatal only to the _other!_ Deadlier than the sunken reef Since still the snare it shifteth, Torpid in dumb ambuscade Waylayingly it drifteth. O, the sailors--O, the sails! O, the lost crews never heard of! Well the harp of Ariel wails Thought that tongue can tell no word of!