O pleasant days, that followed his return,
That made his captive years pass out of mind;
If life had yet new pains for him to learn,
Not in the maid's clear eyes he saw it shrined;
And three full weeks he stayed with her, content
To find her beautiful and innocent.
It was all one in his contented sight
As though she were a child, till suddenly,
Waked of the chimes in the dead time of the night,
He fell to thinking how the urgency
Of Fate had dealt with him, and could but sigh
For those best things wherein she passed him by.
Down the long river of life how, cast adrift,
She urged him on, still on, to sink or swim;
And all at once, as if a veil did lift,
In the dead time of the night, and bare to him
The want in his deep soul, he looked, was dumb,
And knew himself, and knew his time was come.
In the dead time of the night his soul did sound
The dark sea of a trouble unforeseen,
For that one sweet that to his life was bound
Had turned into a want--a misery keen:
Was born, was grown, and wounded sorely cried
All 'twixt the midnight and the morning tide.
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