An old eagle, a blind eagle, who waits hungry and cold and still;
He seeks nothing, he fears nothing: he stands lone on a lonely hill.

He wanders, like a day-appearing dream,
Through the dim wildernesses of the mind;
Through desert woods and tracts, which seem
Like ocean, homeless, boundless, unconfined.

Tallys up his loneliness, notch by notch,
For the sea offers nuthin' to hold or touch.

Adrift upon the sea of time, the lonely god wanders from shore to distant shore, upholding the laws of the stars above.

Where the remote Bermudas ride,
In th' ocean's bosom unespied.

There came to the beach a poor exile of Erin,
The dew on his thin robe was heavy and chill;
For his country he sigh'd, when at twilight repairing
To wander alone by the wind-beaten hill.

Lonely by the moonlit waters
Does the conqueror stand,
Yet unredden'd by the slaughters
Of his mighty band.
Yet his laurel wants a leaf.
There he stands, sad, silent, lonely ;
For his hope is vain :
He has reached that river only
To return again.

Oh! breathe not his name, let it sleep in the shade,
Where cold and unhonour'd his relics are laid.

The Wild still lingered in him and the wolf in him merely slept.

"A Man Adrift On A Slim Spar"

A man adrift on a slim spar
A horizon smaller than the rim of a bottle
Tented waves rearing lashy dark points
The near whine of froth in circles.
God is cold.

The incessant raise and swing of the sea
And growl after growl of crest
The sinkings, green, seething, endless
The upheaval half-completed.
God is cold.

The seas are in the hollow of The Hand;
Oceans may be turned to a spray
Raining down through the stars
Because of a gesture of pity toward a babe.
Oceans may become gray ashes,
Die with a long moan and a roar
Amid the tumult of the fishes
And the cries of the ships,
Because The Hand beckons the mice.
A horizon smaller than a doomed assassin's cap,
Inky, surging tumults
A reeling, drunken sky and no sky
A pale hand sliding from a polished spar.
God is cold.

The puff of a coat imprisoning air:
A face kissing the water-death
A weary slow sway of a lost hand
And the sea, the moving sea, the sea.
God is cold.

And in his eyes
The cold stars lighting, very old and bleak,
In different skies.

Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

As if the man had fixed his face, In many a solitary place, Against the wind and open sky!

On the island of New Georgia in the Solomons,
Stands a simple wooden cross alone to tell
That beneath the silent coral of the Solomons,
Sleeps a man, sleeps a man remembered well.