CONTRABAND by EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON

A HEAP of low, dark, rocky coast,
Where the blue-black sea sleeps smooth and even:
And the sun, just over the reefs at most,
In the amber part of a pale blue heaven:

A village asleep below the pines,
Hid up the gray shore from the low slow sun:
And a maiden that lingers among the vines,
With her feet in the dews, and her locks undone:

The half-moon melting out of the sky;
And, just to be seen still, a star here, a star there,
Faint, high up in the heart of the heaven; so high
And so faint, you can scarcely be sure that they are there.

And one of that small, black, raking craft;
Two swivel guns on a round deck handy;
And a great sloop sail with the wind abaft;
And four brown thieves round a cask of brandy.

That's my life, as I left it last.
And what it may be henceforth I know not.
But all that I keep of the merry Past
Are trifles like these, which I care to show not: --

A leathern flask, and a necklace of pearl;
These rusty pistols, this tattered chart, Friend,
And the soft dark half of a raven curl;
And, at evening, the thought of a true, true heart, Friend.

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