Twenty Years

Down on the ancient wharf, the sand, I sit, with a new-comer chatting:
He shipp’d as green-hand boy, and sail’d away, (took some sudden, vehement notion;)
Since, twenty years and more have circled round and round,
While he the globe was circling round and round,⁠—and now returns:
How changed the place⁠—all the old land-marks gone⁠—the parents dead;
(Yes, he comes back to lay in port for good⁠—to settle⁠—has a well-fill’d purse⁠—no spot will do but this;)
The little boat that scull’d him from the sloop, now held in leash I see,
I hear the slapping waves, the restless keel, the rocking in the sand,
I see the sailor kit, the canvas bag, the great box bound with brass,
I scan the face all berry-brown and bearded⁠—the stout-strong frame,
Dress’d in its russet suit of good Scotch cloth:
(Then what the told-out story of those twenty years? What of the future?)