The Castaway

Obscurest night involv'd the sky,
          Th' Atlantic billows roar'd,
When such a destin'd wretch as I,
          Wash'd headlong from on board,
Of friends, of hope, of all bereft,
          His floating home for ever left.

No braver chief could Albion boast
          Than he with whom he went,
Nor ever ship left Albion's coast,
          With warmer wishes sent.
He lov'd them both, but both in vain,
          Nor him beheld, nor her again.

Not long beneath the whelming brine,
          Expert to swim, he lay;
Nor soon he felt his strength decline,
          Or courage die away;
But wag'd with death a lasting strife,
          Supported by despair of life.

He shouted: nor his friends had fail'd
          To check the vessel's course,
But so the furious blast prevail'd,
          That, pitiless perforce,
They left their outcast mate behind,
          And scudded still before the wind.

Some succour yet they could afford;
          And, such as storms allow,
The cask, the coop, the floated cord,
          Delay'd not to bestow.
But he (they knew) nor ship, nor shore,
          Whate'er they gave, should visit more.

Nor, cruel as it seem'd, could he
          Their haste himself condemn,
Aware that flight, in such a sea,
          Alone could rescue them;
Yet bitter felt it still to die
          Deserted, and his friends so nigh.

He long survives, who lives an hour
          In ocean, self-upheld;
And so long he, with unspent pow'r,
          His destiny repell'd;
And ever, as the minutes flew,
          Entreated help, or cried—Adieu!

At length, his transient respite past,
          His comrades, who before
Had heard his voice in ev'ry blast,
          Could catch the sound no more.
For then, by toil subdued, he drank
          The stifling wave, and then he sank.

No poet wept him: but the page
          Of narrative sincere;
That tells his name, his worth, his age,
          Is wet with Anson's tear.
And tears by bards or heroes shed
          Alike immortalize the dead.

I therefore purpose not, or dream,
          Descanting on his fate,
To give the melancholy theme
          A more enduring date:
But misery still delights to trace
          Its semblance in another's case.

No voice divine the storm allay'd,
          No light propitious shone;
When, snatch'd from all effectual aid,
          We perish'd, each alone:
But I beneath a rougher sea,
          And whelm'd in deeper gulfs than he.

--William Cowper (1731-1800), prominent English poet and inspiration to the early Romantics. This was believed to be his last poem written before his death. It is featured in the film version of the novel Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, chosen by screenwriter and actress Emma Thompson. Cowper was listed as Marianne's favorite poet in the novel, but the poem read by Edward was left unnamed. Technically this choice is an anachronism, as the novel is set between 1795 and 1800, and this poem was published posthumously in 1803.

Image: Man Overboard, Rescue Launch from HMS 'St Jean d'Acre' by Oswald Walters Bryerly (1817-1894)

In Memoriam Mae Noblitt

This is just a place:
we go around, distanced,
yearly in a star’s

atmosphere, turning
daily into and out of
direct light and

slanting through the
quadrant seasons: deep
space begins at our

heels, nearly rousing
us loose: we look up
or out so high, sight’s

silk almost draws us away:
this is just a place:
currents worry themselves

coiled and free in airs
and oceans: water picks
up mineral shadow and

plasm into billions of
designs, frames: trees,
grains, bacteria: but

is love a reality we
made here ourselves—
and grief—did we design

that—or do these,
like currents, whine
in and out among us merely

as we arrive and go:
this is just a place:
the reality we agree with,

that agrees with us,
outbounding this, arrives
to touch, joining with

us from far away:
our home which defines
us is elsewhere but not

so far away we have
forgotten it:
this is just a place.

--A. R. Ammons (1926-2001), American poet and teacher, awarded two National Books Awards, a National Book Critics Circle Award, the Library of Congress’s Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, and the Bollingen Prize for Poetry, from A Coast of Trees (1981).

In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Anne Bradstreet Who Deceased June 20, 1669, Being Three Years and Seven Months Old

With troubled heart and trembling hand I write,

The heavens have changed to sorrow my delight.
How oft with disappointment have I met,
When I on fading things my hopes have set.
Experience might ‘fore this have made me wise,
To value things according to their price.
Was ever stable joy yet found below?
Or perfect bliss without mixture of woe?
I knew she was but as a withering flower,
That’s here today, perhaps gone in an hour;
Like as a bubble, or the brittle glass,
Or like a shadow turning as it was.
More fool then I to look on that was lent
As if mine own, when thus impermanent.
Farewell dear child, thou ne’er shall come to me,
But yet a little while, and I shall go to thee;
Mean time my throbbing heart’s cheered up with this:
Thou with thy Saviour art in endless bliss.

-- Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672), British born American Puritan poet; first woman poet to gain acclaim in the New World and New England. She emigrated to America in 1630 with her father and her husband aboard the Arbella and settled in Ipswich, MA. She bore eight children between 1632-1655. From her book The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America.

This elegy, one of several she wrote during the catastrophic year of 1669, was written when her namesake grandchild died, and is remarkable for its bitterness indirectly aimed at God, and is representative of her struggle with accepting the Puritan belief that death was merely the passage to eternal joy in Heaven.

Due to the eventual longer lifespans of Puritans in the new World as compared to Europe once the colonies were established, it was said that "New England invented grandparents."

You can find excellent commentary on this poem by Janice Miller Porter here.