To the Breeze

Thou hast been slow to bless us, gentle breeze;
Where hast thou been a lingerer, welcome friend?
Where, when the midnight gather'd to her brow
Her pale and crescent minister, wert thou?
On what far, sullen, solitary seas,
Piping the mariner's requiem, didst thou tend
The home-returning bark,
Curling the white foam o'er her lifted prow,
White, when the rolling waves around her all were dark?
Gently, and with a breath
Of spicy odour from Sabsean vales,
Where subtle life defies and conquers death,
Fill'dst thou her yellow sails!
On, like some pleasant bird,
With glittering plumage and light-loving eye,
While the long pennant lay aloft unstirr'd,
And sails hung droopingly,
Camest thou with tidings of the land to cheer
The weary mariner.
How, when the ocean slept,
Making no sign;
And his dumb waters, of all life bereft,
Lay 'neath the sun-girt line;
His drapery of storm-clouds lifted high
In some far, foreign sky,
While a faint moaning o'er his bosom crept,
As the deep breathings of eternity,
Above the grave of the unburied time,
Claiming its clime —
How did the weary tar,
His form reclined along the burning deck,
Stretch his dim eye afar,
To hail the finger, and delusive speck,
Thy bending shadow, from some rocky steep,
Down-darting o'er the deep!
Born in the solemn night,
When the deep skies were bright,
With all their thousand watchers on the sight—
Thine was the music through the firmament
By the fond nature sent,
To hail the blessed birth,
To guide to lowly earth
The glorious glance, the holy wing of light!
Music to us no less,
Thou comest in our distress,
To cheer our pathway. It is clear, through thee,
O'er the broad wastes of sea.
How soothing to the heart that glides alone,
Unwatch'd and unremember'd, on the wave,
Perchance his grave! —
Should he there perish, to thy deeper moan
What lip shall add one tone?
I bless thee, gentle breeze J
Sweet minister to many a fond desire,
Thou bear'st me to my sire,
Thou, and these rolling seas!
What — O, thou God of this strong element! —
Are we, that it is sent,
Obedient to our fond and fervent hope?
But that its pinion on our path is bent,
We had been doom'd beyond desire to grope,
Where plummet's cast is vain, and human art,
Lacking all chart.