The Castaway

A Fragment

Once again I wander seaward, feel the briny blowing foam,
See the salt expanse that holds me here, a thousand miles from home;

Pace the sandy desert beaches; watch the seagulls soaring high,
Wheeling boundless in their cycles through the boundless, barren sky;

Hear the fitful breezes whistle through the endless pounding surf,
Snatching at the tangled seaweed, pulsing, howling o’er the turf:

Here I sit; and all my senses numb and intertwine with Here;
Here I sit; and would I could arise and join my fancy There!

There, where people push and jostle fellow people in the throng;
Where the slow fall to the swift, the weak are trampled by the strong;

Where the orphan roams the streets, besmirched with foul city slime;
Where the high courts of corruption pave the avenues of crime; –

Yet no creature there so wretched that he cannot gorge his sight,
And find comfort in another wretched fellow-creature’s plight.

Here I sit, nor shed a tear, nor pull my hair, nor utter groan;
What avail? what were the end? Here I am utterly alone.

Here these fourteen years alone, and there alone a month or so; –
One month ere this fateful journey and the start of all my woe:

Emily! I can remember in her all-too-lovely eye
Whisperings of all that’s good, traces of everything that’s high;

I remember how a shade of darkness crept across that light; –
Black and stony cold and lustreless they looked that final night;

How I melted, sickened as she turned those heartless eyes on me! –
Something in me died that night, and I sailed half a man to sea.

Wretched night! I still remember how I cursed this crowded earth,
Cursed the moment of our meeting, cursed the moment of her birth;

Here today I cursed all that I longed for fourteen years ago:
Cursed the stillness, the seclusion from the common human woe;

Cursed this island where the wrong is no more plentiful than right;
Cursed this flower, a breath of beauty sent to mock my ugly plight.

Yesterday I climbed again the high volcano on the north,
Cursed its sleep, defied it to spew all its fiery vomit forth:

Yet it slept; no invocation could disturb its slothful rest,
And I cursed it as a likeness of the languor in my breast.

Oh, how many thousand years has it lain passionless and bare?
And yet once – how long ago! – its shrieks of passion rent the air.

Singled out from all its fellows, tame beneath a lonely sky,
Sucking comfort from remembrance, half as desolate as I!

Yet less wildly – am I right to sing this importunate song?
I must cease this: I will not be guilty of the greater wrong.

Singled out? thrust here alone upon this desert island grave?
Aye! for all my fellow sailors sank beneath the briny wave.

I was singled out – for of us all ‘tis I that still have breath:
I was set apart in mercy, singled out alone from death.

Is it well to curse my island? shake my fist at careless fate?
Shall I rave and sputter, blinded to the comforts of my state?

‘How I loathe this wretched island’ is my memory then so poor?
Fourteen years ago I called her blessed, and kissed her sandy shore.

It was only for this island I was able to survive; –
And for fourteen years her ample fruits have kept me here alive.

I have never suffered hunger; I have never been in need;
I am free to climb the highest hill or walk the greenest mead;

I have gathered fruits and honey; had not crusts sufficed as well?
On this island I am passing happy; – bah! what lies I tell!

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