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Poems (Hinxman)/The Fisherman's Return

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4681689Poems — The Fisherman's ReturnEmmeline Hinxman
THE FISHERMAN'S RETURN.
The night was closing in, and on the sea
Pressed with dark weight, from which the fretful tide
Broke out, and dimly whitened down the shore,
What time the fisherman ran up his keel
Upon the grating beach, and lowered his mast
With practised speed that shamed his lusty sons:
They stood with shouldered baskets on the shore,
But he threw up a quick and.sidelong glance
Where, like a hanging star upon the cliff;
His cottage window gleamed. "Go on," he said,
"I follow soon," and he stooped down, and feigned
Some work upon his craft. But being left,
The man sat down, and faced the sea, and propped
A rugged cheek upon his rugged hand,
And groaned aloud. What was that groan, and why
Did be delay to take the homeward path?
Six days ago his help-mate from his door
Was carried to the churchyard. She had been
A woman in the hardness of her life,
Hardened, like him, in face and voice and ways,
Perhaps in nature: sympathy and love
In each, may be, surviving, long had ceased
To put their tokens forth, even as the sap
Sleeps in the winter woods. And when this stroke
Severed the long companionship of toil
The hardness melted not, to lookers on,
In him who stayed behind.

In him who stayed behind.But since her death
Now was his first return from wonted toil;
Now first his door should open on the change,—
A gulph in the old flow of fifty years.
Another hand should take the damp sea-coat,
And hang the nets and set the platters round.
Therefore he lingered, gazing on the sea.
Before him broke its dreary, drifting waste;
As broken, and as drifting, and as drear,
He saw his life around him: and that hour
He wished to lay his head beneath the waves,
There with drowned eyes and ears and heart to lie,—
To lie, and never see his home again.

   Jan. 25. 1851,