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XIII.

Oh, cheating dream! oh, credulous hope!
We could have wept, each one;–
‘Twas but our own ship’s bell that rung
At setting of the sun.
The echoes, muffled in the cold,
Came back forlorn and lost,
Dim shadows of departed sounds,
From the caverns of the frost–
And we were alone on the wide wide sea
With the icebergs and the frost.

XIV.

Three days and nights they hemmed us in,
An adamantine wall,
We saw their peaks and battlements,
We heard them crack and fall.
The fourth day when we rose at morn
The favouring breezes blew.
The dwindling icebergs far behind
Had left us passage through;
The good ship sped, our sails were spread
Full breasted to the sky,
And for aid in peril and distress
We praised the Lord on High.

XV.

At length, impatient of the ship,
We reached the golden land.
And Heseltine and I took leave
Upon its desolate strand,
And breathed the hope to meet again
Fervently, hand in hand.
And I went out to the wilderness
With earnest heart and high.
To put my manhood to the test
All danger to defy,
And gather store of the burning gold
That all men deify.

XVI.

Day by day I toiled and dug;
I was the veriest slave,
Who ever sold himself to chains–
I wrought with fool and knave.
With the selfsame toil for the selfsame end;
I hated them one and all,
So stubborn of heart–so coarse of tongue,
Such bondsmen under thrall,
So mean and grasping–pity me Heaven!
I hated them one and all.

XVII.

All the deeper my hatred grew,
Because from day to day
I feared and felt I might become
As grovelling as they.
I saw their vices in my own,
And turned my eyes away.

XVIII.

One was a peer of ancient blood,
The lord of acres–none;
And one a wrangler from the Cam
In purse and name undone.
And one could speak in choicest Greek,
And one was a bishop’s son.

XIX.

And they dug, and dug, and so did I,
And many a hundred more,
Who claimed me of their brotherhood
For the greed of the golden ore.
But I loathed them from my haughty heart,
And kept myself aside,
A moody man but little esteemed,
With armour strong and tried,
Armour of proof and coat of mail,–
Unconquerable pride.

XX.

One morn, apart and unobserved,
I roamed beyond the bound,
And saw a streak of glittering gold
An inch above the ground;
I could not lift it with my hands;–
I dug, and none was near;–
I scraped the earth with greedy haste
In a pang of joy and fear.

XXI.

And oh! the lustful agony,
I sought not to control–
The avarice greedy as Hell’s own fire,
That stirred me body and soul,
As I bared it forth–and inch hy inch
Measured it–part, and whole!

XXII.

The gold was long, and hroad, and thick,
As the statue of a man;–
I felt a fever in my blood
That through my pulses ran,
As I looked and wondered at the wealth
All mine to have and hold!
Alas! not so; I could not move
This thing so heavy and cold;–
Nor I nor twenty men could stir
The fiendish lump of gold.

XXIII.

I sat and gazed with savage eyes
Till joy gave place to dread;
I felt the fate of Tantalus;–
I smote my aching head.
A coward terror blenched my face,
The rustle of a leaf
Filled me with fear, lest it should tell
The footsteps of a thief.
I trembled at the waving grass
And the whisper of the wind;
While the cry of the parrot, hoarse and rough,
In the thicket houghs behind.
Made my cheeks burn, it seemed so like
The voice of human kind.