Ah! Thus alone at the helm in darkness, By all forsaken, by Death forgotten, When sails unknown far away are wafted And some swift-coursing by night are passing, To note the ground-swell's resistless current, The sighing heart of the breathing ocean -- Or small waves plashing along the planking, Its quiet pastime amid its sadness. Then glide my lingering longings over Into the ocean-deep grief of nature, The night's, the water's united coldness Prepares my spirit for death's dark dwelling. Then comes day's dawning! My soul bounds upward On beams of light to the vault of heaven; My ship-steed sniffing its flank is laving With buoyant zest in the cooling billow. With song the sailor to masthead clambers To clear the sail that shall swell more freely, And thoughts are flying like birds aweary Round mast and yard-arm, but find no refuge. ... Yes, toward the ocean! To follow Vikar! To sail like him and to sink as he did, For great King Olaf the prow defending! With keel unswerving the cold thought cleaving, But hope deriving from lightest breezes! Death's eager fingers so near the rudder, While heaven's clearness the way illumines! And then at last in the final hour To feel the bolts and the nails are yielding And Death is pressing the seams asunder, That in may stream the absolving water! Wet winding-sheets shall be folded round me, And I descend to eternal silence, While rolling billows my name bear shoreward In spacious nights 'neath the cloudless moonlight! ALONE AND REPENTANT (TO A FRIEND SINCE DECEASED) (See Note 9) A friend I possess, whose whispers just said, "God's peace!" to my night-watching mind. When daylight is gone and darkness brings dread, He ever the way can find. He utters no word to smite and to score; He, too, has known sin and its grief. He heals with his look the place that is sore, And stays till I have relief. He takes for his own the deed that is such That sorrows of heart increase. He cleanses the wound with so gentle a touch, The pain must give way to peace. He followed each hope the heights that would scale Reproached not a hapless descent. He stands here just now, so mild, but so pale; -- In time he shall know what it meant. THE PRINCESS The princess looked down from her bower high, The youth blew his horn as he lingered thereby. "Be quiet, O youth, will forever you blow? It hinders my thoughts, that would far away go, Now, when sets the sun." The princess looked down from her bower high, The youth ceased his blowing, his horn he laid by. "Why are you so quiet? Now more shall you blow, It lifts all my thoughts, that would far away go, Now, when sets the sun." The princess looked down from her bower high, The youth blew again, as he lingered thereby. Then weeping, she whispered: "O God, let me know The name of this sorrow that burdens me so! -- Now has set the sun." FROM MONTE PINCIO