YE that have faced the billows and the spray Of good St. Botolph's island-studded bay, As from the gliding bark your eye has scanned The beaconed rocks, the wave-girt hills of sand, Have ye not marked one elm-o'ershadowed isle, Round as the dimple chased in beauty's smile,-- A stain of verdure on an azure field, Set like a jewel in a battered shield? Fixed in the narrow gorge of Ocean's path, Peaceful it meets him in his hour of wrath; When the mailed Titan, scourged by hissing gales, Writhes in his glistening coat of clashing scales, The storm-beat island spreads its tranquil green, Calm as an emerald on an angry queen. So fair when distant should be fairer near; A boat shall waft us from the outstretched pier. The breeze blows fresh; we reach the island's edge, Our shallop rustling through the yielding sedge. No welcome greets us on the desert isle; Those elms, far-shadowing, hide no stately pile Yet these green ridges mark an ancient road; And to! the traces of a fair abode; The long gray line that marks a garden-wall, And heaps of fallen beams,--fire-branded all. Who sees unmoved, a ruin at his feet, The lowliest home where human hearts have beat? Its hearthstone, shaded with the bistre stain A century's showery torrents wash in vain; Its starving orchard, where the thistle blows And mossy trunks still mark the broken rows; Its chimney-loving poplar, oftenest seen Next an old roof, or where a roof has been; Its knot-grass, plantain,--all the social weeds, Man's mute companions, following where he leads; Its dwarfed, pale flowers, that show their straggling heads, Sown by the wind from grass-choked garden-beds; Its woodbine, creeping where it used to climb; Its roses, breathing of the olden time; All the poor shows the curious idler sees, As life's thin shadows waste by slow degrees, Till naught remains, the saddening tale to tell, Save home's last wrecks,--the cellar and the well? And whose the home that strews in black decay The one green-glowing island of the bay? Some dark-browed pirate's, jealous of the fate That seized the strangled wretch of "Nix's Mate"? Some forger's, skulking in a borrowed name, Whom Tyburn's dangling halter yet may claim? Some wan-eyed exile's, wealth and sorrow's heir, Who sought a lone retreat for tears and prayer? Some brooding poet's, sure of deathless fame, Had not his epic perished in the flame? Or some gray wooer's, whom a girlish frown Chased from his solid friends and sober town? Or some plain tradesman's, fond of shade and ease, Who sought them both beneath these quiet trees? Why question mutes no question can unlock, Dumb as the legend on the Dighton rock? One thing at least these ruined heaps declare,-- They were a shelter once; a man lived there.