--those widows drear
Upstanding straight from mile to mile beside
The banks of rivers--obstinately gaze
Upon this madman, in his headstrong craze
Prolonging his mad voyage 'gainst the tide.

But she, who yonder in the mist-clouds hailed
Him still so desperately, she wailed and wailed,
With head outstretched in fearful, straining haste
Toward the unknown of the outstretched waste.

Steady as one that had in bronze been cast,
Amid the blenched, grey tempest and the blast.
The ferryman his single oar yet plied.
And, spite of all, still lashed and bit the tide.
His old eyes, with hallucinated gaze,
Saw that far distance--an illumined haze--
Whence the voice sounded, coming toward him still.
Beneath the cold skies, lamentable, shrill.

The last oar broke--
And this the current hurried at one stroke,
Like a frail straw, towards the distant sea.

The ferryman, with arms dropped helplessly
Sank on his bench, forlorn.
His loins with vain efforts broken, torn.

Drifting, his barque struck somewhere, as by chance,
He turned a glance
Towards the bank behind him then--and saw
He had not left the shore.

The casements and the dials, one by one.
Their huge eyes gazing in a foolish stare.
Witnessed the ruin of his ardour there;
But still the old, tenacious ferryman
Firm in his teeth--for God knows when, indeed--
Held the green reed.

THE SILENCE

Ever since ending of the summer weather.
When last the thunder and the lightning broke,
Shatt'ring themselves upon it at one stroke,
The Silence has not stirred, there in the heather.

All round about stand steeples straight as stakes,
And each its bell between its fingers shakes;
All round about, with their three-storied loads,
The teams prowl down the roads;
All round about, where'er the pine woods end,
The wheel creaks on along its rutty bed,
But not a sound is strong enough to rend
That space intense and dead.

Since summer, thunder-laden, last was heard.
The Silence has not stirred;
And the broad heath-land, where the nights sink down
Beyond the sand-hills brown.
Beyond the endless thickets closely set,
To the far borders of the far-away.
Prolongs It yet.

Even the winds disturb not as they go

The boughs of those long larches, bending low
Where the marsh-water lies,
In which Its vacant eyes
Gaze at themselves unceasing, stubbornly.
Only sometimes, as on their way they move,
The noiseless shadows of the clou