| Sometimes, with fearful
dangers doomed to cope,
'Reft of each wild and visionary hope,
Stabbed with a thousand wounds, we struggle still,
The hand that tortures, powerless to kill.
Sometimes 'mid ocean storms, in fearful strife,
We stem the wave, and shrieking, gasp for life,
While crowding round us, faces rise and gleam,
Some known and loved, some, pictures of our dream;
High on the buoyant waters wildly tossed -
Low in its foaming caverns darkly lost -
Those flitting forms the dangerous hour partake,
Cling to our aid, or suffer for our sake.
Conscious of present life, the slumbering soul
Still floats us onward, as the billows roll,
Till, snatched from death, we seem to touch the strand,
Rise on the shoreward wave, and dash to land!
Alone we come: the forms whose wild array
Gleamed round us while we struggled, fade away, -
We know not, reck not, who the danger shared,
But, vaguely dreaming, feel that we are spared.
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