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Title: The Dead Stowaway
Author: Will Carleton [
More Titles by Carleton]
He lay on the beach, just out of the reach
Of waves that had cast him by:
With fingers grim they reached for him
As often as they came nigh.
The shore-face brown had a surly frown,
And glanced at the dancing sea,
As if to say, "Take back the clay
You tossed this morning at me."
Great fragments rude, by the shipwreck strewed,
Had found by this wreck a place;
He had grasped them tight, and hope-strewn fright
Sat still on the bloated face.
Battered and bruised, forever abused,
He lay by the heartless sea,
As if Heaven's aid had never been made
For a villain such as he.
The fetter's mark lay heavy and dark
Around the pulseless wrists;
The hardened scar of many a war
Clung yet to the drooping fists.
The soul's disgrace across that face
Had built an iron track;
The half-healed gash of the jailman's lash
Helped cover the brawny back.
The blood that flowed in a crimson road
From a deep wound in his head
Had felt fierce pangs from the poison-fangs
Of those who his young life fed:
Cursed from the very beginning
With deeds that others had done,
"More sinned against than sinning"--
And so is every one!
He had never learned save what had turned
The steps of his life amiss;
He never knew a hand-grasp true,
Or the thrill of a virtuous kiss.
'Twas poured like a flood through his young blood,
And poisoned every vein,
That wrong is right, that law is spite,
And theft but honest gain.
The seeds were grown that had long been sown
By the heart of a murderous sire:
Disease and shame, and blood aflame
With thirst for the founts of fire.
Battered and bruised, forever abused,
He lay by the moaning sea,
As if Heaven's aid were even afraid
Of a villain such as he.
As he lay alone, like a sparrow prone,
An angel wandered nigh:
A look she cast over that dark past,
And tears came to her eye.
[Illustration: "BATTERED AND BRUISED, FOREVER ABUSED,
HE LAY BY THE MOANING SEA."]
She bent by the dead, and tenderly said:
"Poor child, you went astray;
Your heart and mind were both born blind--
No wonder they lost their way!
Angels, I know, had fallen as low
With such a dismal chance.
Your heart was ironed, your soul environed,
You were barred of all advance!
Cursed from the very beginning
With deeds that others have done,
'More sinned against than sinning'--
And so is every one!"
[From Farmer Harrington's Calendar.]
MAY 24, 18--.
The Lord gave Water quite a good-sized start--
Three-fourths of this world's homestead for its part;
But lawyers are not needed to convince
That Water has been losing ever since.
The reason is not hard to understand:
For God's most knowing creatures live on land,
And, naturally, every chance they get,
Find some new means to keep them from the wet.
The farms their dykes have from the ocean won;
The ground men make to build their cities on;
The bridge that from the river shelters me;
The ships--great travelling bridges of the sea--
All are an effort of ambitious man
To make this world as solid as he can.
These thoughts, to-day, all through my mind would run,
While looking at a bridge they've just got done,
Which takes a man, dry shod, from shore to shore--
A matter of a good long mile or more.
I can't describe it; but I'll let the papers
(Who tell some truth, 'mid all their fancy capers)
To my old scrap-book give of it a taste
(What I can't do with ink I'll do with paste).
[The end]
Will Carleton's poem: Dead Stowaway
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