Moan on with thy loud changeless wail, <br />Desolate sea, <br />Grinding thy pebbles into thankless sand. <br />Oh, could I lash my angry heart like thee <br />Until it broke upon an iron land, <br />The very rocks should tremble and turn pale <br />To be the witness of my agony. <br /> <br />Fierce wind, the sob of thy dull pitiless voice <br />Is thick with snow. <br />Hiss out thy tale into my ice--bound ear <br />In sleety whispers, for full well I know <br />That in thy wanderings thou hast seen my joys, <br />My young joys, dead in some far hemisphere, <br />A land of blackness and colossal woe. <br /> <br />Naked they lay, my shipwrecked mariners, <br />Upon the shore. <br />The low moon pointed her long fingers, red <br />As a murderer's hand, between their prison bars <br />In the ribbed wreck, which hungry ocean tore <br />At the first spring--tide to reclaim the dead <br />And hide them in his jaws for evermore. <br /> <br />Tell me, thou silence, what sad death they died, <br />Poor castaways! <br />What wolfish eyes were on each other there, <br />When they had eaten all that hunger stays, <br />And thirst no longer could be quenched with pride! <br />Didst thou not see their teeth grow white and bare, <br />Grinding a savage thought for many days, <br /> <br />Until they fell upon their own red hearts? <br />Thou didst not see, <br />Or Thou hadst surely had some pity, God, <br />When they crept gnawing to the vital parts, <br />My joys, which I had nursed so tenderly <br />In the very cradle of my love's abode. <br />Or art Thou pitiless as wind or sea?<br /><br />Wilfrid Scawen Blunt<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/dead-joys/
