Canto X
I hear the noise about thy keel;I hear the bell struck in the night:I see the cabin-window bright;I see the sailor at the wheel.
Thou bringest the sailor to his wife,And travell’d men from foreign lands;And letters unto trembling hands;And, thy dark freight, a vanish’d life.
So bring him; we have idle dreams:This look of quiet flatters thusOur home-bred fancies: O to us,The fools of habit, sweeter seems
To rest beneath the clover sod,That takes the sunshine and the rains,Or where the kneeling hamlet drainsThe chalice of the grapes of God;
Than if with thee the roaring wellsShould gulf him fathom-deep in brine;And hands so often clasp’d in mine,Should toss with tangle and with shells.