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The one whose face his heart did still adore,

She was not there this pilgrim strange to hail.

Upon him fell a sadness, which alone

The homeless, longing traveller doth know,

Augmented by a disappointed love,

And standing musing at the vessel’s prow,

The only thing his wistful vision saw,

Was that red glow which on the water shone.

He stood there when the evening shadows fell,

And darkening storm-clouds rose o’er England’s coast,

He stood there when the night closed from his view

The shores of France, within the deepest blue,

Through which a glim’ring light, the uttermost,

Was smiling him a dubious farewell.

He stood there when the waves began to roll,

The wind to sigh and whine in sail and rope,

And night closed round him with forebodings dark

Of dangers for the rocking little bark,

On which full many souls now stayed their hope,

That it would bear them to their journey’s goal.

But he feared not, no, rather pleasure found

In the arising fury of the deep,

Since it expressed the sorrow of his soul,