I hear the noise about thy keel;
I hear the bell struck in the night:
I see the cabin-window bright;
I see the sailor at the wheel.
Thou bring’st the sailor to his wife,
;;And travell’d men from foreign lands;
And letters unto trembling hands;
And, thy dark freight, a vanish’d life.
So bring him: we have idle dreams:
;;This look of quiet flatters thus
;;Our home-bred fancies: O to us,
The fools of habit, sweeter seems
To rest beneath the clover sod,
;;That takes the sunshine and the rains,
;;Or where the kneeling hamlet drains
The chalice of the grapes of ***;
Than if with thee the roaring wells
;;Should gulf him fathom-deep in brine;
;;And hands so often clasp’d in mine,
Should toss with tangle and with shells.