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THE MARY ROSS
“What was the hardest hour,” you ask,
“Ever I had at sea?”
There was that in the wreck of the Mary Ross
Is bitten into me.
Five merry weeks of sun and speed,
A ship well-mann’d and stout—
One hour from home she falter’d, stopp’d
Short . . . and the lights went out.
What follow’d—O just-dealing God,
How firm must be Thy mind,
Such a beginning to have given
And such an end design’d!
. . . Sudden, from human eyes and hands
And kindred human breath,
Into the wild black Void, into
The unthought-on fangs of Death. . . .
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