Then up and spake an old Sailor, Had sailed to the Spanish Main," "I pray thee, put into yonder port, For I fear a hurricane.

"Last night, the moon had a golden ring,
And to-night no moon we see!"

The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe,
And a scornful laugh laughed he.

Colder and louder blew the wind,
A gale from the Northeast,
The snow fell hissing in the brine,

And the billows frothed like yeast.

Down came the storm, and smote amain
The vessel in its strength;

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She shuddered and paused, like a frightened

steed.

Then leaped her cable's length.

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"Come hither! come hither! my little daughter,

And do not tremble so;

For I can weather the roughest gale

That ever wind did blow."

He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat
Against the stinging blast;

He cut a rope from a broken spar,
And bound her to the mast.

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"O father! I hear the church-bells ring,

O say, what may it be?"

“'T is a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!"— And he steered for the open sea.

"O father! I hear the sound of guns,

O say, what may it be?"

"Some ship in distress, that cannot live In such an angry sea!"

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"O father! I see a gleaming light,

O say, what may it be?"

But the father answered never a word,
A frozen corpse was he.

Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
With his face turned to the skies,
The lantern gleamed through the gleaming

snow

On his fixed and glassy eyes.

Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed

That saved she might be;

And she thought of Christ, who stilled the

wave,

On the Lake of Galilee.

And fast through the midnight dark and drear,

Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept Tow'rds the reef of Norman's Woe.

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And ever the fitful gusts between
A sound came from the land;
It was the sound of the trampling surf
On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.

The breakers were right beneath her bows,
She drifted a dreary wreck,

And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her deck.

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She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool,

But the cruel rocks, they gored her side
Like the horns of an angry bull.

Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
With the masts went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank,
Ho! ho! the breakers roared!

At daybreak,

on the bleak sea-beach, A fisherman stood aghast,

To see the form of a maiden fair,
Lashed close to a drifting mast.

The salt sea was frozen on her breast,

The salt tears in her eyes;

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And he saw her hair, like the brown seaweed, On the billows fall and rise.

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Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,

In the midnight and the snow! ›

Christ save us all from a death like this,

SOUTHWARD with fleet of ice

Sailed the corsair Death;
Wild and fast blew the blast,
And the east-wind was his breath.

His lordly ships of ice

Glisten in the sun;

On each side, like pennons wide,

Flashing crystal streamlets run.

His sails of white sea-mist

Dripped with silver rain;

But where he passed there were cast
Leaden shadows o'er the main.

Eastward from Campobello

Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed;

Three days or more seaward he bore,
Then, alas! the land-wind failed.

Alas! the land-wind failed,

And ice-cold grew the night;

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1848.

And nevermore, on sea or shore,

Should Sir Humphrey see the light.

He sat upon the deck,

The Book was in his hand;
"Do not fear! Heaven is as near,"
He said, “by water as by land!"

In the first watch of the night,
Without a signal's sound,
Out of the sea, mysteriously,..

The fleet of Death rose all around.

The moon and the evening star

Were hanging in the shrouds;

Every mast, as it passed,

Seemed to rake the passing clouds.

They grappled with their prize,
At midnight black and cold!
As of a rock was the shock;
Heavily the ground-swell rolled.

Southward through day and dark,
They drift in close embrace,

With mist and rain, o'er the open main;
Yet there seems no change of place.

Southward, forever southward,
They drift through dark and day;
And like a dream, in the Gulf-Stream
Sinking, vanish all away.›

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

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