The shades of night were falling fast, His brow was sad; his eye beneath, The accents of that unknown tongue, In happy homes he saw the light 'Try not the pass!' the old man said; 'O stay,' the maiden said, 'and rest 'Beware the pine-tree's withered branch! This was the peasant's last good-night; At break of day, as heavenward O'er wrathful surge, through blackening storm, 'Mid the deep darkness white as snow! Many ports will exult at the gleam of her mast! Hush hush! thou vain dreamer! this hour is her last. Five hundred souls in one instant of dread Are hurried o'er the deck; And fast the miserable ship Becomes a lifeless wreck. Her keel hath struck on a hidden rock, Her planks are torn asunder, And down come her masts with a reeling shock, And a hideous crash like thunder. Her sails are draggled in the brine, That gladdened late the skies, And her pendant1 that kissed the fair moonshine Down many a fathom lies. Her beauteous sides, whose rainbow hues And flung a warm and sunny flash Oh! many a dream was in the ship An hour before her death; And sights of home with sighs disturbed He wakes at the vessel's sudden roll, Now is the ocean's bosom bare, The ship hath melted quite away, Like a struggling dream at break of day. But the new-risen sun and the sunny sky. Wilson. 1 Pendant. See Pennon, note 1 of The Convict Ship, page 76. THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS. It was the schooner 1 Hesperus, That sailed the wintry sea; And the skipper 2 had taken his little daughter Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax, Her cheeks like the dawn of day, And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds, The skipper he stood beside the helm, His pipe was in his mouth, 3 And he watched how the veering flaw 3 did blow The smoke-now west, now south. Then up and spake an old sailor, ‘I pray thee, put into yonder port, 'Last night the moon had a golden ring,5 The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe, Colder and louder blew the wind And the billows frothed like yeast. 48 THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS. Down came the storm, and smote amain The vessel in its strength; She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed, '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. 'O father! I hear the church-bells ring, "Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!' 'O father! I hear the sound of guns, 'O father, I see a gleaming light, But the father answered never a word, A frozen corpse was he. Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark, The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed And she thought of Christ who stilled the wave |