No More Learning

At first on her due course the vessel flies,
And fills the pilot full of hardihood.
The beach retreats, and from the sailors' eyes
So fades, the sea appears a shoreless flood.
Upon the darkening of the day, the wind
Displays its fickle and perfidious kind.

IX
It shifts from poop to beam, from beam to prow,
And even there short season doth remain:
The reeling ship confounds the pilot; now
Struck fore, now aft, now on her beam again.
Threatening the billows rise, with haughty brow,
And Neptune's white herd lows above the main.
As many deaths appear to daunt that rout,
As waves which beat their troubled bark about.

X
Now blows the wind in front, and now in rear,
And drives this wave an-end, that other back;
Others the reeling vessel's side o'erpeer;
And every billow threatens equal wrack.
The pilot sighs, confused and pale with fear;
Vainly he calls aloud to shift the tack,
To strike or jibe the yard; and with his hand,
Signs to the crew the thing he would command.

XI
But sound or signal little boots; the eye
Sees not amid the dim and rainy night;
The voice unheard ascends into the sky, --
The sky, which with a louder larum smite
The troubled sailors' universal cry,
And roar of waters, which together fight.
Unheard is every hest, above, below,
Starboard or larboard, upon poop or prow.

XII
In the strained tackle sounds a hollow roar,
Wherein the struggling wind its fury breaks;
The forked lightning flashes evermore,
With fearful thunder heaven's wide concave shakes.
One to the rudder runs, one grasps an oar;
Each to his several office him betakes.
One will make fast, another will let go;
Water into the water others throw.

XIII
Lo! howling horribly, the sounding blast,
Which Boreas in his sudden fury blows,
Scourges with tattered sail the reeling mast:
Almost as high as heaven the water flows:
The oars are broken; and so fell and fast
That tempest pelts, the prow to leeward goes;
And the ungoverned vessel's battered side
Is undefended from the foaming tide.
XIV
Fallen on her starboard side, on her beam ends,
About to turn keel uppermost, she lies.
Meanwhile, his soul to Heaven each recommends,
Surer than sure to sink, with piteous cries.
Scathe upon scathe malicious Fortune sends,
And when one woe is weathered, others rise.
O'erstrained, the vessel splits; and through her seams
In many a part the hostile water streams.

XV
A fierce assault and cruel coil doth keep
Upon all sides that wintry tempest fell.
Now to their sight so high the billows leap,
It seems that these to heaven above would swell;
Now, plunging with the wave, they sink so deep,
That they appear to spy the gulfs of hell.
Small hope there is or none: with faultering breath
They gaze upon inevitable death.

XVI
On a despiteous sea, that livelong night,
They drifted, as the wind in fury blew.
The furious wind that with the dawning light
Should have abated, gathered force anew.
Lo! a bare rock, ahead, appears in sight,
Which vainly would the wretched band eschew;
Whom towards that cliff, in their despite, impel
The raging tempest and the roaring swell.

XVII
Three times and four the pale-faced pilot wrought
The tiller with a vigorous push to sway;
And for the bark a surer passage sought:
But the waves snapt and bore the helm away.
To lower, or ease the bellying canvas aught
The sailors had no power; nor time had they
To mend that ill, or counsel what was best;
For them too hard the mortal peril prest.

XVIII
Perceiving now that nothing can defend
Their bark from wreck on that rude rock and bare,
All to their private aims alone attend,
And only to preserve their life have care.
Who quickest can, into the skiff descend;
But in a thought so overcrowded are,
Through those so many who invade the boat,
That, gunwale-deep, she scarce remains afloat.

XIX
Rogero, on beholding master, mate,
And men abandoning the ship with speed,
In doublet, as he is, sans mail and plate,
Hopes in the skiff, a refuge in that need:
But finds her overcharged with such a weight,
And afterwards so many more succeed,
That the o'erwhelming wave the pinnace drown,
And she with all her wretched freight goes down;

XX
Goes down, and, foundering, drags with her whoe'er
Leaving the larger bark, on her relies.