INDEPENDENCE
415
And still he stayed from day to day
If he their kindness might repay;
But more and more
The sullen waves came rolling toward the shore.
And still the more the stranger waited,
The less his argosy was freighted,
And still the more he stayed,
The less his debt was paid.
So he unfurled his shrouded mast
To receive the fragrant blast;
And that sane refreshing gale
Which had wooed him to remain
Again and again,
It was that filled his sail
And drove him to the main.
All day the low-hung clouds
Dropt tears into the sea;
And the wind amid the shrouds
Sighed plaintively.
INDEPENDENCE[1]
My life more civil is and free
Than any civil polity.
Ye princes, keep your realms
And circumscribèd power,
- ↑ ["First printed in full in the Boston Commonwealth, October 30, 1863. The last fourteen lines had appeared in The Dial under the title of 'The Black Knight,' and are so reprinted in the Riverside Edition." (Note in Poems of Nature.)]
