Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE WATCH BELOW, by EDWARD NOYES POMEROY


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE WATCH BELOW, by                    
First Line: His childhood's longings are come true
Last Line: Let the wet sea boy lie!
Subject(s): Childhood Memories; Sailing & Sailors; Sea Voyages


His childhood's longings are come true
In all their widest, wildest range;
This is the picture fancy drew;
How real, yet how strange.

The braces snap; the storm sails rip;
The fettered gales have struggled free;
The straining greyhound is the ship,
The foaming wolves the sea.

Their glistening fangs are wide to strike;
Their famished eyes are flakes of fire;
Hunger and surfeit whet alike
Their immemorial ire.

But fleeter than the fleeing hound,
And surer than the ruthless foe,
On rushes to its fated bound
The midnight watch below.

The watch is called; he never heeds;
Let the sweet feast his longing cloy;
On nectar and ambrosia feeds
The sleeping sailor boy.

The fo'castle, the deck, the spars,
The swollen sea, the lowering skies,
The drowning sun, the dripping stars
Have faded from his eyes.

The mast is creaking by his berth,
The lantern smokes above his head,
But sleepless potentates of earth
Might envy him his bed.

His yearning gaze is on the past;
Through their red gates the hot tears flow;
That this swift hour will be his last
Ah, well he does not know.

His sister's prattle charms his ear;
His mother's silence stirs his soul;
What matters now the exile's tear,
The vessel's plunging roll?

All in the revel of his dream
He loiters down the leafy lane;
He plashes in the pebbly stream;
Above the storm's refrain

He hears the oriole's sweet clang;
He sees the swinging apple spray;
The same call through the orchard rang
The morn he came away.

The age-long malady of grief
No earthly remedy can mend:
Alas, that only joy is brief,
That fairest visions end!

He wakes at rush of trampling feet,
And shouts and oaths that stay his prayer,
To join, at halyard and at sheet,
The seamen swaying there.

With these he lines the lurching deck,
And mans the yards that skim the seas:
He fears nor wind, nor wave, nor wreck,
Nor destiny's decrees.

In all his wrath the storm is on;
Deep calls to deep in travail-moan;
Down to the waste the boy has gone—
The weltering waste—alone.

The horror of the downward sweep.
The struggle of the smothering brine.
My guardian angel, thou wouldst weep
If such a fate were mine!

Didst ghostly forms about him flit
In the vast void of rolling foam?
Did all the demons of the pit
To mock his anguish come?

Stay, weak lament! He fared not ill;
My life-dream too will soon go by.
It is his watch below; be still:
Let the wet sea boy lie!





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