Behold the Hour the Boat Arrive Second Version
written in 1793
Behold the Hour the Boat Arrive Second Version - fact Summary
Nancy Mclehose's Departure
Written in 1793, this short lyric is a farewell addressed to Nancy McLehose, who was leaving for Jamaica. The speaker watches the departing boat and records his helpless grief at enforced separation. He haunts the shore, greets the distant isle, and imagines her among tropical groves while asking whether she thinks of him. The poem’s language frames a personal, transatlantic parting—an elegy of absence that turns the sea into a rehearsed memory and the imagined foreign landscape into the site of the beloved’s new life.
Read Complete AnalysesBehold the hour, the boat arrive; Thou goest, the darling of my heart; Sever'd from thee, can I survive, But Fate has will'd and we must part. I'll often greet the surging swell, Yon distant Isle will often hail: "E'en here I took the last farewell; There, latest mark'd her vanish'd sail." Along the solitary shore , While flitting sea-fowl round me cry, Across the rolling, dashing roar, I'll westward turn my wistful eye: "Happy thou Indian grove," I'll say, "Where now my Nancy's path may be! While thro' thy sweets she loves to stray, O tell me, does she muse on me!"
Feel free to be first to leave comment.