100
SEA DREAMS.
Said, “trust him not;” but after, when I came
To know him more, I lost it, knew him less;
Fought with what seem’d my own uncharity;
Sat at his table; drank his costly wines;
Made more and more allowance for his talk;
Went further, fool! and trusted him with all,
All my poor scrapings from a dozen years
Of dust and deskwork: there is no such mine,
None; but a gulf of ruin, swallowing gold,
Not making. Ruin’d! ruin’d! the sea roars
Ruin: a fearful night!’
To know him more, I lost it, knew him less;
Fought with what seem’d my own uncharity;
Sat at his table; drank his costly wines;
Made more and more allowance for his talk;
Went further, fool! and trusted him with all,
All my poor scrapings from a dozen years
Of dust and deskwork: there is no such mine,
None; but a gulf of ruin, swallowing gold,
Not making. Ruin’d! ruin’d! the sea roars
Ruin: a fearful night!’
‘Not fearful; fair,’
Said the good wife, ‘if every star in heaven
Can make it fair: you do but bear the tide.
Had you ill dreams?’
Said the good wife, ‘if every star in heaven
Can make it fair: you do but bear the tide.
Had you ill dreams?’
‘O yes,’ he said, ‘I dream’d
Of such a tide swelling toward the land,
And I from out the boundless outer deep
Of such a tide swelling toward the land,
And I from out the boundless outer deep
