ONE broad, white sail in Spezzia's treacherous bay <br />On comes the blast; too daring bark, beware I <br />The cloud has clasped her; to! it melts away; <br />The wide, waste waters, but no sail is there. <br /> <br />Morning: a woman looking on the sea; <br />Midnight: with lamps the long veranda burns; <br />Come, wandering sail, they watch, they burn for thee! <br />Suns come and go, alas! no bark returns. <br /> <br />And feet are thronging on the pebbly sands, <br />And torches flaring in the weedy caves, <br />Where'er the waters lay with icy hands <br />The shapes uplifted from their coral graves. <br /> <br />Vainly they seek; the idle quest is o'er; <br />The coarse, dark women, with their hanging locks, <br />And lean, wild children gather from the shore <br />To the black hovels bedded in the rocks. <br /> <br />But Love still prayed, with agonizing wail, <br />'One, one last look, ye heaving waters, yield!' <br />Till Ocean, clashing in his jointed mail, <br />Raised the pale burden on his level shield. <br /> <br />Slow from the shore the sullen waves retire; <br />His form a nobler element shall claim; <br />Nature baptized him in ethereal fire, <br />And Death shall crown him with a wreath of flame. <br /> <br />Fade, mortal semblance, never to return; <br />Swift is the change within thy crimson shroud; <br />Seal the white ashes in the peaceful urn; <br />All else has risen in yon silvery cloud. <br /> <br />Sleep where thy gentle Adonais lies, <br />Whose open page lay on thy dying heart, <br />Both in the smile of those blue-vaulted skies, <br />Earth's fairest dome of all divinest art. <br /> <br />Breathe for his wandering soul one passing sigh, <br />O happier Christian, while thine eye grows dim,-- <br />In all the mansions of the house on high, <br />Say not that Mercy has not one for him!<br /><br />Oliver Wendell Holmes<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/after-a-lecture-on-shelley/
