And to my mind the thought Is on a sudden brought Of a past night, and a far different scene. Headlands stood out into the moonlit deep As clearly as at noon; The spring-tide’s brimming flow Heaved dazzlingly between; Houses, with long white sweep, Girdled the glistening bay; Behind, through the soft air, The blue haze-cradled mountains spread away. That night was far more fair-- But the same restless pacings to and fro, And the same vainly throbbing heart was there, And the same bright, calm moon. And the calm moonlight seems to say,-- _Hast thou, then, still the old unquiet breast,_ _Which neither deadens into rest,_ _Nor ever feels the fiery glow_ _That whirls the spirit from itself away,_ _But fluctuates to and fro,_ _Never by passion quite possessed,_ _And never quite benumbed by the world’s sway?_ And I, I know not if to pray Still to be what I am, or yield, and be Like all the other men I see. For most men in a brazen prison live, Where, in the sun’s hot eye, With heads bent o’er their toil, they languidly Their lives to some unmeaning task-work give, Dreaming of naught beyond their prison-wall. And as, year after year, Fresh products of their barren labor fall From their tired hands, and rest Never yet comes more near, Gloom settles slowly down over their breast. And while they try to stem The waves of mournful thought by which they are prest, Death in their prison reaches them, Unfreed, having seen nothing, still unblest. And the rest, a few, Escape their prison, and depart On the wide ocean of life anew. There the freed prisoner, where’er his heart Listeth, will sail; Nor doth he know how there prevail, Despotic on that sea, Trade-winds which cross it from eternity. Awhile he holds some false way, undebarred By thwarting signs, and braves The freshening wind and blackening waves. And then the tempest strikes him; and between The lightning-bursts is seen Only a driving wreck, And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck With anguished face and flying hair, Grasping the rudder hard, Still bent to make some port, he knows not where, Still standing for some false, impossible shore. And sterner comes the roar Of sea and wind; and through the deepening gloom Fainter and fainter wreck and helmsman loom, And he too disappears, and comes no more. Is there no life, but these alone? Madman or slave, must man be one?