Collected Poems

Thou Who Controllest

Thou who controllest the wide-spuming Ocean and settest its paces,
Hear me, thou strong and resistless Poseidon, lord of the waters.
Dancing thy waves in their revel Titanic, tossing my vessel
One to another, laugh from their raucous throats of derision,
Dropping it deep in their troughs till it buries its prow in the welter.
Comrades dear as the drops of my heart have been left when it rises,
Left in thy salt and lonely seas, and the scream of the tempest
Chides me that still I live, but I live and I yield not to Hades.
Staggering on as one laughed at and buffeted, straining for shelter,
Hopes despairingly, so by the pitiless mob of thy billows
Seized the ship goes stumbling on and is wounded and blinded,
Seeming allowed to run through their ranks, but they mock at the struggle,
Seeming allowed to escape, but they mean it not. They are thy minions.
They are thy servants, thy nation, heartless and loud and triumphant,
God of the waters, ruthless Poseidon.