Starlight: with deep and quiet breathing slept

The southern sea. The white-wing’d ship that bore

The good Aeneas from his Dido’s shore

Ghostlike, with rippling furrows, onward crept,

And only faithful Palinurus kept

The midnight watch—but ah, the magic bough,

The opiate dew that dript upon his brow,

The vacant post, the friends who waking wept.

The gods demand their victims; who shall know

What failures Time and Circumstance compel?

Yet, if such doom were mine, I would ’twere so

That they would mark my absence thus: “How well

Even unto the last he struggled, lo!

He tore the rudder with him when he fell!”