Our sailor oft could scantily shift T. CAMPBELL. THE HEROIC BOY. (HE boy stood on the burning deck, The flames that lit the battle's wreck Shone round him o'er the dead. Yet beautiful and bright he stood, As born to rule the storm; A creature of heroic blood, A brave though childlike form. The flames rolled on-he would not go That father, faint in death below, He called aloud-"Say, father, say He knew not that the chieftain lay Unconscious of his son. "Speak, father!" once again he cried, "If I may yet be gone," And but the booming shots replied, And fast the flames rolled on. The Wreck of the Hesperus. Upon his brow he felt their breath, And looked from that lone post of death In still yet brave despair. And shouted but once more aloud, "My father, must I stay?" While o'er him fast, through sail and shroud, They wrapped the ship in splendour wild, They caught the flag on high, And streamed above the gallant child, Like banners in the sky. There came a burst of thunder-cloud- With fragments strewed the sea, With mast, and helm, and pennon fair, HEMANS. 133 THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS. ST was the schooner Hesperus, That sailed the wintry sea, And the skipper had taken his little daughter, To bear him company. Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax, Her cheeks like the dawn of day, And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds, That ope in the month of May. The skipper he stood beside the helm, With his pipe in his mouth, And watched how the veering flaw did blow The smoke now west, now south. Then up and spake an old sailor, Last night, the moon had a golden ring, The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe, Colder and louder blew the wind, And the billows frothed like yeast. Down came the storm, and smote amain The vessel in its strength; She shuddered and paused like a frighted steed, Then leaped her cable's length. "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. The Wreck of the Hesperus. "O father! I hear the church-bells ring, O say, what may it be?" "'Tis 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!" "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, With his face to the skies, The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed That saved she might be ; 135 And she thought of Christ, who stilled the waves, On the Lake of Galilee. And fast through the midnight dark and drear, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept And ever the fitful gusts between It was the sound of the trampling surf, The breakers were right beneath her bows, She drifted a dreary wreck, And a whooping billow swept the crew Like icicles from her deck. She struck where the white and fleecy waves But the cruel rocks, they gored her side Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice, Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank, At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach, 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; And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed, Such was the wreck of the Hesperus, On the reef of Norman's Woe! LONGFELLOW. |