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rses glisten; To wonder and want--and go to sleep again, And die, And be forgot. THE COLONEL'S STORY No, no, my friend; there is an agony Not to be exorcised out of the world By any voice of hope.--But, I will tell you. The _Sonia_ was sailing without lights-- Bearing three hundred souls--and without bells; For she had reached the "Zone," where the Hun sharks With their torpedo tongues could spit death at us Out of the inky sea-hells where they hid. On the main deck we stood, in a wind-shelter,-- My wife, and by us a pale girl whose eyes Had all disaster in them. And my thought was, "I hope to God the moon is shut so deep In cloud-murk there in the East that hurricanes Can't blow her out of it." For in the Zone The moon had come to mean only betrayal, And now, if ever, was her wanton chance. The slipping water soaked with soulless dark Fell under and around us shudderingly, Yet somehow brought an anxious hopefulness. "We're making twenty knots," I said; and felt Our bow cut thro the tangle of the waves As if the No Man's _Sea_ ahead of us Would soon be crossed; and I, out to rejoin My regiment, could set my wife safe somewhere, And help again to stab that curst amphibian, Autocracy--whose spawn in the sea gave it A terror greater than infinitude's. For God knows, with the woman that one loves Aboard a ship, and only a cloud perhaps Between the Hun's shark eyes and sure escape From the black icy fathoms that would choke her, There's little left within a man but nerves. So when I drew her closer into the shelter, Out of the sheering wind, the life belt She wore seemed like a coffin in that sepulchre Of night and sea. And when the other, there, With the disaster eyes and pallid face, Turned half toward us, I was shaken as if The moon had suddenly walked out of her shroud With phosphorescent purpose to reveal us. But on we plunged and tumbled, till at last The blank monotonous sink and swell lulled me To faith. And I was only thinking softly Of her--my wife's--first kiss on a summer night Under the moonlit laurels of our home, When came a cry from the wan girl gazing Frozenly on the sea--where the moon now Indeed was pointing at us pallidly A death-path. And my throat was gr
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