Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, FLYING FISH: AN ODE, by CHARLES WHARTON STORK


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

FLYING FISH: AN ODE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Low lies bermuda on our starboard bow
Last Line: The ship drives on; bermuda looms ahead.
Subject(s): Fish & Fishing; Sea; Sea Gulls; Ocean


Low lies Bermuda on our starboard bow,
The morning's hue is misty like a pearl's.
As lightly through the severing swells we plough,
To right and left the widening foam-wedge curls.
I stand and watch alone:
No slanting sail, no black and stalwart hull,
Not even one stray gull
To fleck the languid ocean's monotone;
Nothing but sky and sea
And, vague with mystery,
Yon distant island, fairy-like, unknown.

But what is that? Scarce fifty yards away
A flock of birds where bird before was none,
Skimming across the smooth unlustrous gray
On wings that glint so oddly in the sun!
No sooner seen than lost,
Melted like scudding snow-flakes as they touch
The surface, not so much
As one black bobbing head of all that host.
Yet see! once more they rise
And, like strange dragonflies,
Along our bow-flung breakers deftly coast.

I know you now, ye birds that may not soar,
Ye flashers in two elements. Your flight
So low, so little veering, and the four
Short filmy wings that, quivering, catch the light, --
These told me what you were.
Audacious truants from your parent sea,
Half-fabulous are ye
Oh flying-fish, oh sylph-like beings rare,
That, heedless quite of earth,
Spring toward a nobler berth
From the dim waters to the radiant air!

How must it be to swim among your kind,
Dull with the cold and dreary with the dark,
Enclosed above, beneath, before, behind
In green uncertainty, from which a shark
At any time may dash
And doom you like some huge demonic fate
With lust insatiate? --
His fins and tail the swirling waters lash.
What use to dart aside?
Those great jaws, grinning wide;
Will close your frolic as the long teeth clash.

But have I then forgot? The bonds that hold
The others of your race are loosed for you,
For you alone. The silver dolphin bold
Curves like a spray-haired comet from the blue,
But may not poise or flit
As you do --. What if but a minute's space?
Hardly a longer grace
Has poet, saint or lover. Nor a whit
Less sure to sink are we;
Our wings of ecstasy
No loftier, no longer joy permit.

Yet joy it is! to scorn the dread of death,
To dwell for shining moments in the sun
Of Beauty and sweet Love, to drink one breath
Of a diviner element -- though but one;
To reach a higher state
Of being, to explore a new domain;
To leap, and leap again,
Unheeding the dark Presence that doth wait
And follow till we fall:
For -- fishes, men and all --
The grim old Shark will have us, soon or late.

Then tell me, comrades, does your little flight
Thrill with the foretaste of a life to be?
Is your ethereal revel in the light
The promise of some fair eternity;
Where you may roam at will,
Safe from the terror of the world you knew,
On wings of rainbow hue? --
How vain to question! I may ask my fill.
One life is all you wish;
You fly, and are but fish;
Your gift, a trick of blind instinctive skill.

And I who ask, -- have I a certain sign
That these poor flights (which seemingly exalt
My soul into an element more fine)
Prove me immortal? Reason stops, at fault.
But still by hope I'm led;
And I'll but hope the more, if hope be all,
Nor shall e'en Death appall!

I start and look: the flying-fish have fled;
Have got them to their kind,
Or tamely dropped behind.
The ship drives on; Bermuda looms ahead.





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