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The Dread Voyage: Poems

Chapter 2: THE DREAD VOYAGE.
By Wilfred Campbell
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Poetry

About This Book

The collection gathers lyrical and narrative poems that move between storm-borne sea voyages, winter and seasonal landscapes, and intimate meditations on love, guilt, death, and memory. Imagery is vivid and elemental—wind, ice, waves, and night recur—while voices shift from elegiac solitude to dramatic confession. Several pieces use dreamlike and mythic resonance to explore fate and remorse; others observe rural and shoreline scenes with tonal shifts from awe to foreboding. The sequence alternates compressed narrative episodes and reflective lyrics, creating an atmosphere of haunting inevitability and contemplative mourning.

THE DREAD VOYAGE.

Trim the sails the weird stars under— Past the iron hail and thunder, Past the mystery and the wonder, Sails our fated bark; Past the myriad voices hailing, Past the moaning and the wailing, The far voices failing, failing, Drive we to the dark.
Past the headlands grim and sombre, Past the shores of mist and slumber, Leagues on leagues no man may number, Soundings none can mark;
While the olden voices calling, One by one behind are falling; Into silence dread, appalling, Drift we to the dark.
Far behind, the sad eyes yearning, Hands that wring for our returning, Lamps of love yet vainly burning: Past the headlands stark! Through the wintry snows and sleeting, On our pallid faces beating, Through the phantom twilight fleeting. Drive we to the dark.
Without knowledge, without warning, Drive we to no lands of morning; Far ahead no signals horning Hail our nightward bark.
Hopeless, helpless, weird, outdriven, Fateless, friendless, dread, unshriven, For some race-doom unforgiven, Drive we to the dark.
Not one craven or unseemly; In the flare-light gleaming dimly, Each ghost-face is watching grimly: Past the headlands stark! Hearts wherein no hope may waken, Like the clouds of night wind-shaken, Chartless, anchorless, forsaken, Drift we to the dark.