VI.
 

That loss is common would not make
    My own less bitter, rather more:
    Too common! Never morning wore
To evening, but some heart did break.

O father, wheresoe’er thou be,
    Who pledgest now thy gallant son;
    A shot, ere half thy draught be done,
Hath still’d the life that beat from thee.

O mother, praying God will save
    Thy sailor,–while thy head is bow’d,
    His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud
Drops in his vast and wandering grave.

Ye know no more than I who wrought
    At that last hour to please him well;
    Who mused on all I had to tell,
And something written, something thought;

Expecting still his advent home;
    And ever met him on his way
    With wishes, thinking, ‘here to-day,’
Or ‘here to-morrow will he come.’

O somewhere, meek, unconscious dove,
    That sittest ranging golden hair;
    And glad to find thyself so fair,
Poor child, that waitest for thy love!

For now her father’s chimney glows
    In expectation of a guest;
    And thinking ‘this will please him best,’
She takes a riband or a rose;

For he will see them on to-night;
    And with the thought her colour burns;
    And, having left the glass, she turns
Once more to set a ringlet right;

And, even when she turn’d, the curse
    Had fallen, and her future Lord
    Was drown’d in passing thro’ the ford,
Or kill’d in falling from his horse.

O what to her shall be the end?
    And what to me remains of good?
    To her, perpetual maidenhood,
And unto me no second friend.