A circle of grey
The search of references from our listed authors has given quite good results for the strophe that ends in tears. We will now see what happens with the subsequent strophe.
Crisp flax squeaks tall reeds
Make a circle of grey in a summer way, around man
Stood on ground
What makes "a circle of grey in a summer way" could just be the desolate crisp flax sails on a calm sea, around the shipwrecked man. By the way, the Nautilus had sails too. We have to quote some lines again (in grey) to see how the sails surround the shipwrecked man:
And the fair nautilus, with silken sail,
Was but the prophet of some rising gale.
Down in the deep what monster forms drew nigh,
With eyes of fire; and skeletons swam by,
Like mocking deaths, which seemed, with bony hand,
To point new terrors in some viewless land.
Surrounded thus with every form of woe
That shipwrecked man was ever doomed to know,
One of the two leaped madly in the tide
To cool his burning brow; he sank, and died!
- — Mark F. Bigney, "Wreck of the Nautilus"
However, instead of sails, one may also think of curtains, sheets, and even clothes, as a prominent part of what could be seen floating after a disaster at sea.
