I saw no mission, blind with wretchedness,
In her who held the right
To be my mistress—
Who claimed her share of all my woe or bliss.
I crushed all duty by ignoring this.

One night, when all was still, she stood beside me,
Pale as my thoughts, with eyes that looked away
The dying friendship of our marriage day,
And bitterly defied me.
Gross words were hers, that only hurt and soil
The mind from which they come;
Words of mind rough-hewn in petty toil,
Yet with a meaning in them. I was dumb.
But when she stained the name of that young maid,
That dwelling-place for sunshine where I played,
Like some glad boy, and pleased a heart grown cold,
I spake out fierce and bold,
With bitter phrases better left unsaid.
I was as innocent as Faith in this:
The pretty maiden, to my sober mind,
Was like a pleasant thought of buried bliss,
A memory of sweetness left behind,
A sense of something lovely gone before,
A gentle friend too soon to be forgot,
Who made me gay because I loved her not,
Nor dreamed of loving—this and nothing more.
So angry speech was mine, and swift as thought,
Words that stung back upon my lips and died,
Perchance more pitiless because I sought
To justify the bitterness of thought
Which came between the woman and my pride.
She laughed a homeless laugh without a tear,
And as she left my side
There was a list'ning malice in her sneer.

What demon urged me on to mock and dare her,
To wound the snake that then began to stir?
To coin a paltry show of scorn for her,
And love for one face fairer,
To taunt her with the bitterness I bare her?
My blood no longer flowed with pulses cool;
I gave the woman whose hard hands had been
Toiling to teach me how to think her mean,
The right to scorn me and to hate me. Fool!
And if I talked to that sweet friend, whenever
My wedded wife was near,
The selfish demon in me would rejoice,
And put a softer pathos in my voice
That she might vindicate her scorn, and hear.
She watched us, sitting silently apart,
With cruel eyes, and eyebrows knitted down;
The bright blood gushing upward from the heart
Blackened about her frown.

Fair winds of incense blew the good ship home,
Through green sea shades from many a pleasant
       clime,
And little snowy showers of ocean-foam;
And in the evening time
We home-sick voyagers would stand in knots,
And gaze towards the west with eager eys,
While, one by one, the stars in quiet skies
Opened in light, like heaven's forget-me-nots.
And sometimes, leaning downward o'er the waves,
Deep without end and blind to human sight,
I seemed to see the shipwreck'd in their graves
Of soundless purple shadows flaked with light;
Green gardens of the depths, so hush'd and fair,
Still as a heart-beat, dumb without a sound,
Where pipy sea-weeds scatter gems around
The faces of the drowned,
Cold, with the freezing ooze amid their hair.

We slept. It was a pleasant night of June;
The sea that sighed around, was still and sweet;
And leaning duskly down in heaven, the moon
Sucked the pale billows to her silver feet.
We slept, or seemed to sleep, for all was calm,
And in our slumbers heard the waters croon
With musical motion, like a village psalm
Heard when blue distance drowns the sober tune;
My wedded wife was in my visions deep,
A bitter stony face
That seemed to haunt me on from place to place,
And as I wandered in the dark of sleep,
Her fitful footsteps faltered on my track,
Through shadows where I heard the lost one weep,
And echoed at my back.

I started with a cry,
And strained towards the darkness eager-eyed;
A shudder at my side
Quickened my pulses, then a sobbing sigh.
My heart thronged hotly through the blood and brain
Till silence seemed a portion of its pain.
I stretched out hands and gazed along the night;
I caught the glimmer of a fluttering gown,
Which as I touched it rustled out of sight,
When something, with a face as deadly white
As dead men's faces floating fathoms down,
Turned, trembling from me in a cold affright,
The wedded woman with her eyes of light
Frozen to terror in the act to frown!

Then, as I gazed and tried in vain to speak,
From some far corner of the ship I heard
A cry of wonder and a smothered shriek,
At which the brooding silence shook and stirred.
There came a busy hum of voices, then
The whispered words and heavy tramp of men,
And a low murmuring as from underground;
And as the moon crept in upon the place
The lips were parted on the ghastly face
That looked a list'ning horror at the sound.
The wondering sleepers stirred with waking sighs,
With terror-stricken eyes
Gazed askingly around.
The woman shuddered from me with a cry,
Blanched with the stifling sense of some despair,
With a wild look that lifted up my hair,
And, in a wild impalpable terror, I
Rushed upward to the air.
Oh, what a horror shut my pulses there!

On the dim deck I stood, as pale as snow.
From the dark centre of the ship there came
A blackened mist of smoke, and down below
A flood of hissing flame,
That like a living thing rushed to and fro,
And grasped the crackling wood with murmurs dire.
"FIRE!"
Shrieked one, in mingled horror and surprise;
And higher yet and higher
The demon surged towards the moonlit skies,
With fiery arms and eyes,
Grasping the deck with sobs, and shrieks, and sighs.
FIRE! Men and women rose in wild affright
To glut their stifled senses with the sight.
Pale mothers with their babes, and men, and boys,
As pale as phantoms from the drowned dead,
While the calm master with his guiding voice
Led the pale seamen, as the waves were shed
Upon the demon's head!
Blind with our terror round the flames we stood,
In a pale cloud of smoke and hissing steam,
Like shapes in some dark dream,
With muttered prayers for good,