The sea is silent to-night. To our inland village,
A mile from the Channel, comes never a sound of the seas.
Windless night is heavy on pasture and tillage,
On houses and herbs and trees.
But suddenly over the silence, lone and far,
Long-drawn, desolate, hovers a deep intoning,
A measureless sadness; and soon, remote as a star,
An answering voice. A multitudinous moaning
Fills the night, and my heart shrinks cold, for I know
That fog has closed on the sea in a blinding smother.
O why do we suffer this craving for another
To split our lives in two? Though my body lies
So safe and warm beneath this low white ceiling,
Dark terrors round me rise;
For my heart is out in the Channel among the wheeling
Wreaths of fog and the deep-tongued desolate cries
Of fog-bound ships; and lying here I am lost
In a darkness denser and stranger
Than any darkness of mist. I am torn and tossed
Upon the horns of a more than bodily danger,
Yes, greater than yours, Beloved, who waken drifting
In your blinded ship that utters its long lament
From the soft, slow swell of the Channel, sinking, lifting,
Out between France and Kent.