Death Comes for the Fat Man

Awhile he holds some false way, undebarr’d

By thwarting signs, and braves

The freshening wind and blackening waves.

And then the tempest strikes him; and between

The lightning bursts is seen

Only a driving wreck,

And the pale master on his spar-strew-deck

With anguish’d face and flying hair

Grasping the rudder hard,

Still bent to make some port he knows not where,

Still standing for some false, impossible shore.

— MATTHEW ARNOLD, “A SUMMER NIGHT”