The Future Poetry

Poems in Quantitative Metres 379

The Lost Boat^10

At the way’s end when the shore raised up its dim line and

remote lights from the port glimmered,

Then a cloud darkened the sky’s brink and the wind’s scream

was the shrill laugh of a loosed demon

And the huge passion of storm leaped with its bright stabs and

the long crashing of death’s thunder;

As if haled by an unseen hand fled the boat lost on the wide

homeless forlorn ocean.

Is it Chance smites? is it Fate’s irony? dead workings or blind

purpose of brute Nature?

Or man’s own deeds that return back on his doomed head with

a stark justice, a fixed vengeance?

Or a dread Will from behind Life that regards pain and salutes

death with a hard laughter?

Is it God’s might or a Force rules in this dense jungle of events,

deeds and our thought’s strivings?

Yet perhaps sank not the bright lives and their glad venturings

foiled, drowned in the grey ocean,

But with long wandering they reached an unknown shore and

a strange sun and a new azure,

Amid bright splendour of beast glories and birds’ music and

deep hues, an enriched Nature

And a new life that could draw near to divine meanings and

touched close the concealed purpose.

(^10) Ionic a minore pentameter with an overflow of one short syllable,


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