MOAN on with thy loud changeless wail, Desolate sea, Grinding thy pebbles into thankless sand. Oh, could I lash my angry heart like thee Until it broke upon an iron land, The very rocks should tremble and turn pale To be the witness of my agony. Fierce wind, the sob of thy dull pitiless voice Is thick with snow. Hiss out thy tale into my ice-bound ear In sleety whispers, for full well I know That in thy wanderings thou hast seen my joys, My young joys, dead in some far hemisphere, A land of blackness and colossal woe. Naked they lay, my shipwrecked mariners, Upon the shore. The low moon pointed her long fingers, red As a murderer's hand, between their prison bars In the ribbed wreck, which hungry ocean tore At the first spring-tide to reclaim the dead And hide them in his jaws for evermore. Tell me, thou silence, what sad death they died, Poor castaways! What wolfish eyes were on each other there, When they had eaten all that hunger stays, And thirst no longer could be quenched with pride! Didst thou not see their teeth grow white and bare, Grinding a savage thought for many days, Until they fell upon their own red hearts? Thou didst not see, Or Thou hadst surely had some pity, God, When they crept gnawing to the vital parts, My joys, which I had nursed so tenderly In the very cradle of my love's abode. Or art Thou pitiless as wind or sea? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...COMIN' THRO' THE RYE by ROBERT BURNS AN ANCIENT TO ANCIENTS by THOMAS HARDY THE RUBAIYAT, 1879 EDITION: 71 by OMAR KHAYYAM THE AUTHOR'S EPITAPH, MADE BY HIMSELF by WALTER RALEIGH THE FISHER'S BOY by HENRY DAVID THOREAU |