Poems (Spofford)/Sheltered

SHELTERED.

Open the door! Did you hear it?
Muffled in mist and gloom,
Out of this rough northeaster
It fell like a stroke of doom.
Some gunner is lost on the meadow—
Hark! No! 'T was a swivel's boom!

Do you know what the boom of a swivel
Means on a night like this?
Can you see the bare masts tottering
Over a black abyss?
There lurching decks, and here firesides
Robbed of their rosy bliss?

Oh, I know of two old hands wringing
Where every ember is gray!
'Tis an old shadow swings that lantern
Down by the storm-blown bay,
To a fair and faithless darling
Signaling home that way.

For out of one house the gladness
Went in a long eclipse,
When she fled to-day with her lover,—
Fled to the shore and its ships;
Never a whisper of parting,
Never a kiss on the lips.

And the chill rain beats about her,—
Their child with the golden locks,—
While out in the thick wild weather,
Girt by the sands and the rocks,
The little schooner trembles
To the tread of the equinox.

Has it come again since we listened?
Ah!—Well, then, make the door fast.
What a great gust shakes the rafter!
How black and bitter the blast!
Stir the fire. In the sands to-morrow
Will be plenty of drift-wood cast.