Linger, I ask no more,-- Thou art enough for ever--thou alone; What future can restore, When thou art flown, All that I hold from thee and call my own? VERSE: HOMEWARD BOUND I have seen a fiercer tempest, Known a louder whirlwind blow; I was wrecked off red Algiers, Six-and-thirty years ago. Young I was, and yet old seamen Were not strong or calm as I; While life held such treasures for me, I felt sure I could not die. Life I struggled for--and saved it; Life alone--and nothing more; Bruised, half dead, alone and helpless, I was cast upon the shore. I feared the pitiless rocks of Ocean; So the great sea rose--and then Cast me from her friendly bosom, On the pitiless hearts of men. Gaunt and dreary ran the mountains, With black gorges, up the land; Up to where the lonely Desert Spreads her burning, dreary sand: In the gorges of the mountains, On the plain beside the sea, Dwelt my stern and cruel masters, The black Moors of Barbary. Ten long years I toiled among them, Hopeless--as I used to say; Now I know Hope burnt within me Fiercer, stronger, day by day: Those dim years of toil and sorrow Like one long dark dream appear; One long day of weary waiting-- Then each day was like a year. How I cursed the land--my prison; How I cursed the serpent sea-- And the Demon Fate that showered All her curses upon me; I was mad, I think--God pardon Words so terrible and wild-- This voyage would have been my last one, For I left a wife and child. Never did one tender vision Fade away before my sight, Never once through all my slavery, Burning day or dreary night; In my soul it lived, and kept me, Now I feel, from black despair, And my heart was not quite broken, While they lived and blest me there. When at night my task was over, I would hasten to the shore; (All was strange and foreign inland, Nothing I had known before;) Strange looked the bleak mountain passes, Strange the red glare and black shade, And the Oleanders, waving To the sound the fountains made. Then I gazed at the great Ocean, Till she grew a friend again; And because she knew old England, I forgave her all my pain: So the blue still sky above me, With its white clouds' fleecy fold, And the glimmering stars, (though brighter,) Looked like home and days of old. And a calm would fall upon me, Worn perhaps with work and pain, The wild hungry longing left me, And I was myself again: Looking at the silver waters, Looking up at the far sky, Dreams of home and all I left there Floated sorrowfully by. A fair face, but pale with sorrow, With blue eyes, brimful of tears, And the little red mouth, quivering With a smile, to hide its fears; Holding out her baby towards me, From the sky she looked on me; So it was that last I saw her, As the ship put out to sea.