The Palatine
Leagues north, as fly the gull and auk,
Point Judith watches with eye of hawk;
Leagues south, thy beacon flames, Montauk!
Lonely and wind-shorn, wood-forsaken,
With never a tree for Spring to waken,
For tryst of lovers or farewells taken,
Circled by waters that never freeze,
Beaten by billow and swept by breeze,
Lieth the island of Manisees,
Set at the mouth of the Sound to hold
The coast lights up on its turret old,
Yellow with moss and sea-fog mould.
Dreary the land when gust and sleet
At its doors and windows howl and beat,
And Winter laughs at its fires of peat!
But in summer time, when pool and pond,
Held in the laps of valleys fond,
Are blue as the glimpses of sea beyond;
When the hills are sweet with the brier-rose,
And, hid in the warm, soft dells, unclose
Flowers the mainland rarely knows;
When boats to their morning fishing go,
And, held to the wind and slanting low,
Whitening and darkening the small sails show,--
Then is that lonely island fair;
And the pale health-seeker findeth there
The wine of life in its pleasant air.
No greener valleys the sun invite,
On smoother beaches no sea-birds light,
No blue waves shatter to foam more white!
There, circling ever their narrow range,
Quaint tradition and legend strange
Live on unchallenged, and know no change.
Old wives spinning their webs of tow,
Or rocking weirdly to and fro
In and out of the peat's dull glow,
And old men mending their nets of twine,
Talk together of dream and sign,
Talk of the lost ship Palatine,--
The ship that, a hundred years before,
Freighted deep with its goodly store,
In the gales of the equinox went ashore.
The eager islanders one by one
Counted the shots of her signal gun,
And heard the crash when she drove right on!
Into the teeth of death she sped
(May God forgive the hands that fed
The false lights over the rocky Head!)
O men and brothers! what sights were there!
White upturned faces, hands stretched in prayer!
Where waves had pity, could ye not spare?
Down swooped the wreckers, like birds of prey
Tearing the heart of the ship away,
And the dead had never a word to say.
And then, with ghastly shimmer and shine
Over the rocks and the seething brine,
They burned the wreck of the Palatine.
In their cruel hearts, as they homeward sped,
'The sea and the rocks are dumb,' they said
'There 'll be no reckoning with the dead.'
But the year went round, and when once more
Along their foam-white curves of shore
They heard the line-storm rave and roar,
Behold! again, with shimmer and shine,
Over the rocks and the seething brine,
The flaming wreck of the Palatine!
So, haply in fitter words than these,
Mending their nets on their patient knees
They tell the legend of Manisees.
Nor looks nor tones a doubt betray;
'It is known to us all,' they quietly say;
'We too have seen it in our day.'
Is there, then, no death for a word once spoken?
Was never a deed but left its token
Written on tables never broken?
Do the elements subtle reflections give?
Do pictures of all the ages live
On Nature's infinite negative,
Which, half in sport, in malice half,
She shows at times, with shudder or laugh,
Phantom and shadow in photograph?
For still, on many a moonless night,
From Kingston Head and from Montauk light
The spectre kindles and burns in sight.
Now low and dim, now clear and higher,
Leaps up the terrible Ghost of Fire,
Then, slowly sinking, the flames expire.
And the wise Sound skippers, though skies be fine,
Reef their sails when they see the sign
Of the blazing wreck of the Palatine!
. . . . .
'A fitter tale to scream than sing,'
The Book-man said. 'Well, fancy, then,'
The Reader answered, 'on the wing
The sea-birds shriek it, not for men,
But in the ear of wave and breeze!'
The Traveller mused: 'Your Manisees
Is fairy-land: off Narragansett shore
Who ever saw the isle or heard its name before?
''T is some strange land of Flyaway,
Whose dreamy shore the ship beguiles,
St. Brandan's in its sea-mist gray,
Or sunset loom of Fortunate Isles!'
'No ghost, but solid turf and rock
Is the good island known as Block,'
The Reader said. 'For beauty and for ease
I chose its Indian name, soft-flowing Manisees!
'But let it pass; here is a bit
Of unrhymed story, with a hint
Of the old preaching mood in it,
The sort of sidelong moral squint
Our friend objects to, which has grown,
I fear, a habit of my own.
'Twas written when the Asian plague drew near,
And the land held its breath and paled with sudden fear.'
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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The Dead Ship Of Harpswell
What flecks the outer gray beyond
The sundown's golden trail?
The white flash of a sea-bird's wing,
Or gleam of slanting sail?
Let young eyes watch from Neck and Point,
And sea-worn elders pray,--
The ghost of what was once a ship
Is sailing up the bay.
From gray sea-fog, from icy drift,
From peril and from pain,
The home-bound fisher greets thy lights,
O hundred-harbored Maine!
But many a keel shall seaward turn,
And many a sail outstand,
When, tall and white, the Dead Ship looms
Against the dusk of land.
She rounds the headland's bristling pines;
She threads the isle-set bay;
No spur of breeze can speed her on,
Nor ebb of tide delay.
Old men still walk the Isle of Orr
Who tell her date and name,
Old shipwrights sit in Freeport yards
Who hewed her oaken frame.
What weary doom of baffled quest,
Thou sad sea-ghost, is thine?
What makes thee in the haunts of home
A wonder and a sign?
No foot is on thy silent deck,
Upon thy helm no hand;
No ripple hath the soundless wind
That smites thee from the land!
For never comes the ship to port,
Howe'er the breeze may be;
Just when she nears the waiting shore
She drifts again to sea.
No tack of sail, nor turn of helm,
Nor sheer of veering side;
Stern-fore she drives to sea and night,
Against the wind and tide.
In vain o'er Harpswell Neck the star
Of evening guides her in;
In vain for her the lamps are lit
Within thy tower, Seguin!
In vain the harbor-boat shall hail,
In vain the pilot call;
No hand shall reef her spectral sail,
Or let her anchor fall.
Shake, brown old wives, with dreary joy,
Your gray-head hints of ill;
And, over sick-beds whispering low,
Your prophecies fulfil.
Some home amid yon birchen trees
Shall drape its door with woe;
And slowly where the Dead Ship sails,
The burial boat shall row!
From Wolf Neck and from Flying Point,
From island and from main,
From sheltered cove and tided creek,
Shall glide the funeral train.
The dead-boat with the bearers four,
The mourners at her stern,--
And one shall go the silent way
Who shall no more return!
And men shall sigh, and women weep,
Whose dear ones pale and pine,
And sadly over sunset seas
Await the ghostly sign.
They know not that its sails are filled
By pity's tender breath,
Nor see the Angel at the helm
Who steers the Ship of Death!
. . . . .
'Chill as a down-east breeze should be,'
The Book-man said. 'A ghostly touch
The legend has. I'm glad to see
Your flying Yankee beat the Dutch.'
'Well, here is something of the sort
Which one midsummer day I caught
In Narragansett Bay, for lack of fish.'
'We wait,' the Traveller said;
'serve hot or cold your dish.'
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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Beyond Kerguelen
DOWN in the South, by the waste without sail on it—
Far from the zone of the blossom and tree—
Lieth, with winter and whirlwind and wail on it,
Ghost of a land by the ghost of a sea.
Weird is the mist from the summit to base of it;
Sun of its heaven is wizened and grey;
Phantom of light is the light on the face of it—
Never is night on it, never is day!
Here is the shore without flower or bird on it;
Here is no litany sweet of the springs—
Only the haughty, harsh thunder is heard on it,
Only the storm, with a roar in its wings!
Shadow of moon is the moon in the sky of it—
Wan as the face of a wizard, and far!
Never there shines from the firmament high of it
Grace of the planet or glory of star.
All the year round, in the place of white days on it—
All the year round where there never is night—
Lies a great sinister, bitter, blind haze on it:
Growth that is neither of darkness nor light!
Wild is the cry of the sea in the caves by it—
Sea that is smitten by spears of the snow;
Desolate songs are the songs of the waves by it—
Down in the South, where the ships never go.
Storm from the Pole is the singer that sings to it
Hymns of the land at the planet’s grey verge.
Thunder discloses dark, wonderful things to it—
Thunder, and rain, and the dolorous surge.
Hills with no hope of a wing or a leaf on them,
Scarred with the chronicles written by flame,
Stare through the gloom of inscrutable grief on them,
Down on the horns of the gulfs without name.
Cliffs with the records of fierce flying fires on them—
Loom over perilous pits of eclipse;
Alps, with anathema stamped in the spires on them—
Out by the wave with a curse on its lips.
Never is sign of soft, beautiful green on it—
Never the colour, the glory of rose!
Neither the fountain nor river is seen on it,
Naked its crags are, and barren its snows!
Blue as the face of the drowned is the shore of it—
Shore, with the capes of indefinite cave.
Strange is the voice of its wind, and the roar of it
Startles the mountain and hushes the wave.
Out to the South and away to the north of it,
Spectral and sad are the spaces untold!
All the year round a great cry goeth forth of it—
Sob of this leper of lands in the cold.
No man hath stood, all its bleak, bitter years on it—
Fall of a foot on its wastes is unknown:
Only the sound of the hurricane’s spears on it
Breaks with the shout from the uttermost zone.
Blind are its bays with the shadow of bale on them;
Storms of the nadir their rocks have uphurled;
Earthquake hath registered deeply its tale on them—
Tale of distress from the dawn of the world!
There are the gaps, with the surges that seethe in them—
Gaps in whose jaws is a menace that glares!
There the wan reefs, with the merciless teeth in them,
Gleam on a chaos that startles and scares!
Back in the dawn of this beautiful sphere, on it—
Land of the dolorous, desolate face—
Beamed the blue day; and the bountiful year on it
Fostered the leaf and the blossom of grace.
Grand were the lights of its midsummer noon on it—
Mornings of majesty shone on its seas:
Glitter of star and the glory of moon on it
Fell, in the march of the musical breeze.
Valleys and hills, with the whisper of wing in them,
Dells of the daffodil—spaces impearled,
Flowered and flashed with the splendour of Spring in them—
Back in the morn of this wonderful world.
Soft were the words that the thunder then said to it—
Said to this lustre of emerald plain;
Sun brought the yellow, the green, and the red to it—
Sweet were the songs of its silvery rain.
Voices of water and wind in the bays of it
Lingered, and lulled like the psalm of a dream.
Fair were the nights and effulgent the days of it—
Moon was in shadow and shade in the beam.
Summer’s chief throne was the marvellous coast of it,
Home of the Spring was its luminous lea:
Garden of glitter! but only the ghost of it
Moans in the South by the ghost of a sea.
poem by Henry Kendall
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Voyage Of The Good Ship Union
1862
'T is midnight: through my troubled dream
Loud wails the tempest's cry;
Before the gale, with tattered sail,
A ship goes plunging by.
What name? Where bound?--The rocks around
Repeat the loud halloo.
--The good ship Union, Southward bound:
God help her and her crew!
And is the old flag flying still
That o'er your fathers flew,
With bands of white and rosy light,
And field of starry blue?
--Ay! look aloft! its folds full oft
Have braved the roaring blast,
And still shall fly when from the sky
This black typhoon has past!
Speak, pilot of the storm-tost bark!
May I thy peril share?
--O landsman, there are fearful seas
The brave alone may dare!
--Nay, ruler of the rebel deep,
What matters wind or wave?
The rocks that wreck your reeling deck
Will leave me naught to save!
O landsman, art thou false or true?
What sign hast thou to show?
--The crimson stains from loyal veins
That hold my heart-blood's flow
--Enough! what more shall honor claim?
I know the sacred sign;
Above thy head our flag shall spread,
Our ocean path be thine!
The bark sails on; the Pilgrim's Cape
Lies low along her lee,
Whose headland crooks its anchor-flukes
To lock the shore and sea.
No treason here! it cost too dear
To win this barren realm
And true and free the hands must be
That hold the whaler's helm!
Still on! Manhattan's narrowing bay
No rebel cruiser scars;
Her waters feel no pirate's keel
That flaunts the fallen stars!
--But watch the light on yonder height,--
Ay, pilot, have a care!
Some lingering cloud in mist may shroud
The capes of Delaware!
Say, pilot, what this fort may be,
Whose sentinels look down
From moated walls that show the sea
Their deep embrasures' frown?
The Rebel host claims all the coast,
But these are friends, we know,
Whose footprints spoil the 'sacred soil,'
And this is?--Fort Monroe!
The breakers roar,--how bears the shore?
--The traitorous wreckers' hands
Have quenched the blaze that poured its rays
Along the Hatteras sands.
--Ha! say not so! I see its glow!
Again the shoals display
The beacon light that shines by night,
The Union Stars by day!
The good ship flies to milder skies,
The wave more gently flows,
The softening breeze wafts o'er the seas
The breath of Beaufort's rose.
What fold is this the sweet winds kiss,
Fair-striped and many-starred,
Whose shadow palls these orphaned walls,
The twins of Beauregard?
What! heard you not Port Royal's doom?
How the black war-ships came
And turned the Beaufort roses' bloom
To redder wreaths of flame?
How from Rebellion's broken reed
We saw his emblem fall,
As soon his cursed poison-weed
Shall drop from Sumter's wall?
On! on! Pulaski's iron hail
Falls harmless on Tybee!
The good ship feels the freshening gales,
She strikes the open sea;
She rounds the point, she threads the keys
That guard the Land of Flowers,
And rides at last where firm and fast
Her own Gibraltar towers!
The good ship Union's voyage is o'er,
At anchor safe she swings,
And loud and clear with cheer on cheer
Her joyous welcome rings:
Hurrah! Hurrah! it shakes the wave,
It thunders on the shore,--
One flag, one land, one heart, one hand,
One Nation, evermore!
poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes
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Hampton Beach
THE SUNLIGHT glitters keen and bright,
Where, miles away,
Lies stretching to my dazzled sight
A luminous belt, a misty light,
Beyond the dark pine bluffs and wastes of sandy gray.
The tremulous shadow of the Sea!
Against its ground
Of silvery light, rock, hill, and tree,
Still as a picture, clear and free,
With varying outline mark the coast for miles around.
On—on—we tread with loose-flung rein
Our seaward way,
Through dark-green fields and blossoming grain,
Where the wild brier-rose skirts the lane,
And bends above our heads the flowering locust spray.
Ha! like a kind hand on my brow
Comes this fresh breeze,
Cooling its dull and feverish glow,
While through my being seems to flow
The breath of a new life, the healing of the seas!
Now rest we, where this grassy mound
His feet hath set
In the great waters, which have bound
His granite ankles greenly round
With long and tangled moss, and weeds with cool spray wet.
Good-by to Pain and Care! I take
Mine ease to-day
Here where these sunny waters break,
And ripples this keen breeze, I shake
All burdens from the heart, all weary thoughts away.
I draw a freer breath, I seem
Like all I see—
Waves in the sun—the white-winged gleam—
Of sea-birds in the slanting beam—
And far-off sails which flit before the south-wind free.
So when Time’s veil shall fall asunder,
The soul may know
No fearful change, nor sudden wonder,
Nor sink the weight of mystery under,
But with the upward rise, and with the vastness grow.
And all we shrink from now may seem
No new revealing;
Familiar as our childhood’s stream,
Or pleasant memory of a dream
The loved and cherished Past upon the new life stealing.
Serene and mild the untried light
May have its dawning;
And, as in summer’s northern night
The evening and the dawn unite,
The sunset hues of Time blend with the soul’s new morning.
I sit alone; in foam and spray
Wave after wave
Breaks on the rocks which, stern and gray,
Shoulder the broken tide away,
Or murmurs hoarse and strong through mossy cleft and cave.
What heed I of the dusty land
And noisy town?
I see the mighty deep expand
From its white line of glimmering sand
To where the blue of heaven on bluer waves shuts down!
In listless quietude of mind,
I yield to all
The change of cloud and wave and wind
And passive on the flood reclined,
I wander with the waves, and with them rise and fall.
But look, thou dreamer!—wave and shore
In shadow lie;
The night-wind warns me back once more
To where, my native hill-tops o’er,
Bends like an arch of fire the glowing sunset sky.
So then, beach, bluff, and wave, farewell!
I bear with me
No token stone nor glittering shell,
But long and oft shall Memory tell
Of this brief thoughtful hour of musing by the Sea.
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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The Cruise of the 'In Memoriam
The wan light of a stormy dawn
Gleamed on a tossing ship:
It was the In Memoriam
Upon a mourning trip.
Wild waves were on the windward bow,
And breakers on the lee;
And through her sides the women heard
The seething of the sea.
“O Captain!” cried a widow fair,
Her plump white hands clasped she,
“Thinkst thou, if drowned in this dread storm,
That savèd we shall be?”
“You speak in riddles, lady dear,
How savèd can we be
If we are drowned?” “Alas, I mean
In Paradise!” said she.
“O I’ve sailed North, and I’ve sailed South”
(He was a godless wight),
“But boy or man, since my days began,
That shore I ne’er did sight!”
The Captain told the First Mate bold
What that fair lady said;
The First Mate sneered in his black beard—
His eyes burned in his head.
“Full forty souls are here aboard,
A-sailing on the wave—
Without the crew, and, ’twixt us two,
I think they’ve none to save—
“Full forty souls, and each one is
A mourner, as you know.
They weep the scuppers full; the ship
Is waterlogged with woe.”
Again he sneered in his black beard:
“The cruise is not so brief,
But, ere we land on earthly strand,
All will have found relief.”
“Nay, nay,” the Captain said, “First Mate,
You have forgotten one
With eyes of blue; the tears are true
From those dear eyes that run!
“She mourns her sweetheart drowned last year,
A seaman he, forsooth!
I would not drown for Christ his crown
If she were mine, Fair Ruth!”
“Brave words! but words,” the First Mate cried,
“Are wind! Behold in me
The warmest lover and the last!
Mine shall the maiden be.”
. . . . .
Fair Ruth stood by the taffrail high,
A cross dropped in the sea,
If you lie here, my sweetheart dear,
By this remember me!”
Fair Ruth stood by the taffrail high,
A ring dropped in the sea:
“Marry him not, ye false mermaids,
Married he’s now to me!”
The heavens flashed flame; a black cloud came,
Its wings the sky did span,
And hovered above the fated ship
Like death o’er a dying man.
Bended the spars and shrieked the shrouds,
The sails flew from the mast,
And, like a soul by fiends pursued,
The ship fled through the blast.
“More sail! more sail!” the First Mate cried
(The Captain stood aghast),
“More sail! more sail!” and he laughed in scorn,
All by the mizen mast.
“O brethren dear, there’s nought to fear,
The steward told me so!”
’Twas the parson meek who thus did speak,
Just come up from below:
“And were there,” he said, with upraised head,
And hands clasped piously,
“I have a sainted spouse in Heaven—
I trow she waits for me.”
Then grimly laughed the false First Mate
“Good parson, let her be!
I’ve a wife in every port but that—
And that we shall not see.”
“Oh, pardon seek!” cried the parson meek,
“And pray, if pray you can,
For much I fear, by your scornful sneer,
That you are a sinful man.”
Then louder laughed the false First Mate,
Louder and louder still,
And the wicked crew laughed loudly too,
As wicked seamen will.
“O Captain!” whispered a gentle dame,
“When shall we see the land?”
The Captain answered never a word,
But clasped her by the hand.
. . . . .
Day after day, night after night,
On, on the ship did reel:
The Captain drank with the second mate,
The First Mate held the wheel.
Down came a black cloud on the ship,
And wrapped her like a pall,
And horror of awful darkness fell
Upon them one and all.
The night had swallowed them utterly,
None could his fellow see,
But ghostly voices up and down
Went whispering fearsomely.
No faint ray shone from moon or sun,
The light of Heaven was gone,
But ever the First Mate held the wheel,
And ever the ship rushed on.
. . . . .
Fair Ruth knelt down in that grim gloom,
She prayed beneath her breath:
“God carry me o’er this dread sea
That seems the Sea of Death!”
She ceased—and lo! a lurid glow
O’er that dark water spread,
And in the blackness burned, afar,
A line of bloody red.
“What lights are yon?” the Captain said.
The First Mate answered then:
“No lights that ever shone upon
The world of living men.”
“Down on your knees!” the parson cried;
“Thank God, for all is well!”
The First Mate laughed: “Those lights, they are
The harbour lights of Hell.”
On flew the ship; to every lip
An ashen pallor came,
For all might see that suddenly
The sea had turned to flame.
The lights were near; the Sea of Fear,
Amid the silence dire,
On that dread shore broke evermore
In soundless foam of fire.
“Oh, what are yon gray ghosts and wan!”
The parson cried, “who seem
With coloured strings of beads to play,
As in a dreadful dream?”
“Damned souls;” the First Mate said; “they sit
And count, through endless years,
The moments of Eternity
On beads of burning tears.”
Then, “Who are you,” the parson said,
“That talk so free of Hell?”
“My name is Satan,” he replied,
“Have I not steered you well?”
“Back—back the yards!” the Captain cried
Then quoth the false First Mate:
“Like many more who sight this shore,
You back your yards too late.”
“There are the dear deceased you mourned
With such exceeding zest;
They call you—whoso freely goes
E’en yet may save the rest.”
One pale ghost waved the vessel back
With gestures sad and dumb—
Fair Ruth has plunged into the sea,
“My love, my love, I come!”
. . . . .
All in a moment shone the sun,
Blue gleamed the sky and sea,
The brave old ship upon the waves
Was dancing merrily.
And merrily to sound of bells
To her old port full soon
The In Memoriam that went forth
Returned the Honeymoon.
There o’er their grog sea-captains still
Her wondrous story tell,
And how her Captain backed his yards
A biscuit-throw from Hell.
poem by Victor James Daley
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The Wreck Of Rivermouth
Rivermouth Rocks are fair to see,
By dawn or sunset shone across,
When the ebb of the sea has left them free,
To dry their fringes of gold-green moss
For there the river comes winding down,
From salt sea-meadows and uplands brown,
And waves on the outer rocks afoam
Shout to its waters, 'Welcome home!'
And fair are the sunny isles in view
East of the grisly Head of the Boar,
And Agamenticus lifts its blue
Disk of a cloud the woodlands o'er;
And southerly, when the tide is down,
'Twixt white sea-waves and sand-hills brown,
The beach-birds dance and the gray gulls wheel
Over a floor of burnished steel.
Once, in the old Colonial days,
Two hundred years ago and more,
A boat sailed down through the winding ways
Of Hampton River to that low shore,
Full of a goodly company
Sailing out on the summer sea,
Veering to catch the land-breeze light,
With the Boar to left and the Rocks to right.
In Hampton meadows, where mowers laid
Their scythes to the swaths of salted grass,
'Ah, well-a-day! our hay must be made!'
A young man sighed, who saw them pass.
Loud laughed his fellows to see him stand
Whetting his scythe with a listless hand,
Hearing a voice in a far-off song,
Watching a white hand beckoning long.
'Fie on the witch!' cried a merry girl,
As they rounded the point where Goody Cole
Sat by her door with her wheel atwirl,
A bent and blear-eyed poor old soul.
'Oho!' she muttered, 'ye 're brave to-day!
But I hear the little waves laugh and say,
'The broth will be cold that waits at home;
For it 's one to go, but another to come!''
'She's cursed,' said the skipper; 'speak her fair:
I'm scary always to see her shake
Her wicked head, with its wild gray hair,
And nose like a hawk, and eyes like a snake.'
But merrily still, with laugh and shout,
From Hampton River the boat sailed out,
Till the huts and the flakes on Star seemed nigh,
And they lost the scent of the pines of Rye.
They dropped their lines in the lazy tide,
Drawing up haddock and mottled cod;
They saw not the Shadow that walked beside,
They heard not the feet with silence shod.
But thicker and thicker a hot mist grew,
Shot by the lightnings through and through;
And muffled growls, like the growl of a beast,
Ran along the sky from west to east.
Then the skipper looked from the darkening sea
Up to the dimmed and wading sun;
But he spake like a brave man cheerily,
'Yet there is time for our homeward run.'
Veering and tacking, they backward wore;
And just as a breath-from the woods ashore
Blew out to whisper of danger past,
The wrath of the storm came down at last!
The skipper hauled at the heavy sail
'God be our help!' he only cried,
As the roaring gale, like the stroke of a flail,
Smote the boat on its starboard side.
The Shoalsmen looked, but saw alone
Dark films of rain-cloud slantwise blown,
Wild rocks lit up by the lightning's glare,
The strife and torment of sea and air.
Goody Cole looked out from her door
The Isles of Shoals were drowned and gone,
Scarcely she saw the Head of the Boar
Toss the foam from tusks of stone.
She clasped her hands with a grip of pain,
The tear on her cheek was not of rain
'They are lost,' she muttered, 'boat and crew!
Lord, forgive me! my words were true!'
Suddenly seaward swept the squall;
The low sun smote through cloudy rack;
The Shoals stood clear in the light, and all
The trend of the coast lay hard and black.
But far and wide as eye could reach,
No life was seen upon wave or beach;
The boat that went out at morning never
Sailed back again into Hampton River.
O mower, lean on thy bended snath,
Look from the meadows green and low
The wind of the sea is a waft of death,
The waves are singing a song of woe!
By silent river, by moaning sea,
Long and vain shall thy watching be
Never again shall the sweet voice call,
Never the white hand rise and fall!
O Rivermouth Rocks, how sad a sight
Ye saw in the light of breaking day
Dead faces looking up cold and white
From sand and seaweed where they lay.
The mad old witch-wife wailed and wept,
And cursed the tide as it backward crept
'Crawl back, crawl back, blue water-snake
Leave your dead for the hearts that break!'
Solemn it was in that old day
In Hampton town and its log-built church,
Where side by side the coffins lay
And the mourners stood in aisle and porch.
In the singing-seats young eyes were dim,
The voices faltered that raised the hymn,
And Father Dalton, grave and stern,
Sobbed through his prayer and wept in turn.
But his ancient colleague did not pray;
Under the weight of his fourscore years
He stood apart with the iron-gray
Of his strong brows knitted to hide his tears;
And a fair-faced woman of doubtful fame,
Linking her own with his honored name,
Subtle as sin, at his side withstood
The felt reproach of her neighborhood.
Apart with them, like them forbid,
Old Goody Cole looked drearily round,
As, two by two, with their faces hid,
The mourners walked to the burying-ground.
She let the staff from her clasped hands fall
'Lord, forgive us! we're sinners all!'
And the voice of the old man answered her
'Amen!' said Father Bachiler.
So, as I sat upon Appledore
In the calm of a closing summer day,
And the broken lines of Hampton shore
In purple mist of cloudland lay,
The Rivermouth Rocks their story told;
And waves aglow with sunset gold,
Rising and breaking in steady chime,
Beat the rhythm and kept the time.
And the sunset paled, and warmed once more
With a softer, tenderer after-glow;
In the east was moon-rise, with boats off-shore
And sails in the distance drifting slow.
The beacon glimmered from Portsmouth bar,
The White Isle kindled its great red star;
And life and death in my old-time lay
Mingled in peace like the night and day!
. . . . .
'Well!' said the Man of Books, 'your story
Is really not ill told in verse.
As the Celt said of purgatory,
One might go farther and fare worse.'
The Reader smiled; and once again
With steadier voice took up his strain,
While the fair singer from the neighboring tent
Drew near, and at his side a graceful listener bent.
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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The Mantle Of St. John De Matha. A Legend Of
A STRONG and mighty Angel,
Calm, terrible, and bright,
The cross in blended red and blue
Upon his mantle white!
Two captives by him kneeling,
Each on his broken chain,
Sang praise to God who raiseth
The dead to life again!
Dropping his cross-wrought mantle,
'Wear this,' the Angel said;
'Take thou, O Freedom's priest, its sign, —
The white, the blue, and red.'
Then rose up John de Matha
In the strength the Lord Christ gave,
And begged through all the land of France
The ransom of the slave.
The gates of tower and castle
Before him open flew,
The drawbridge at his coming fell,
The door-bolt backward drew.
For all men owned his errand,
And paid his righteous tax;
And the hearts of lord and peasant
Were in his hands as wax.
At last, outbound from Tunis,
His bark her anchor weighed,
Freighted with seven-score Christian souls
Whose ransom he had paid.
But, torn by Paynim hatred,
Her sails in tatters hung;
And on the wild waves, rudderless,
A shattered hulk she swung.
'God save us!' cried the captain,
'For naught can man avail;
Oh, woe betide the ship that lacks
Her rudder and her sail!
'Behind us are the Moormen;
At sea we sink or strand:
There's death upon the water,
There's death upon the land!'
Then up spake John de Matha:
'God's errands never fail!
Take thou the mantle which I wear,
And make of it a sail.'
They raised the cross-wrought mantle,
The blue, the white, the red;
And straight before the wind off-shore
The ship of Freedom sped.
'God help us!' cried the seamen,
'For vain is mortal skill:
The good ship on a stormy sea
Is drifting at its will.'
Then up spake John de Matha:
'My mariners, never fear!
The Lord whose breath has filled her sail
May well our vessel steer!'
So on through storm and darkness
They drove for weary hours;
And lo! the third gray morning shone
On Ostia's friendly towers.
And on the walls the watchers
The ship of mercy knew, —
They knew far off its holy cross,
The red, the white, and blue.
And the bells in all the steeples
Rang out in glad accord,
To welcome home to Christian soil
The ransomed of the Lord.
So runs the ancient legend
By bard and painter told;
And lo! the cycle rounds again,
The new is as the old!
With rudder foully broken,
And sails by traitors torn,
Our country on a midnight sea
Is waiting for the morn.
Before her, nameless terror;
Behind, the pirate foe;
The clouds are black above her,
The sea is white below.
The hope of all who suffer,
The dread of all who wrong,
She drifts in darkness and in storm,
How long, O Lord! how long?
But courage, O my mariners!
Ye shall not suffer wreck,
While up to God the freedman's prayers
Are rising from your deck.
Is not your sail the banner
Which God hath blest anew,
The mantle that De Matha wore,
The red, the white, the blue?
Its hues are all of heaven, —
The red of sunset's dye,
The whiteness of the moon-lit cloud,
The blue of morning's sky.
Wait cheerily, then, O mariners,
For daylight and for land;
The breath of God is in your sail,
Your rudder is His hand.
Sail on, sail on, deep-freighted
With blessings and with hopes;
The saints of old with shadowy hands
Are pulling at your ropes.
Behind ye holy martyrs
Uplift the palm and crown;
Before ye unborn ages send
Their benedictions down.
Take heart from John de Matha! —
God's errands never fail!
Sweep on through storm and darkness,
The thunder and the hail!
Sail on! The morning cometh,
The port ye yet shall win;
And all the bells of God shall ring
The good ship bravely in!
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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Down on the Shore
Down on the shore, on the sunny shore!
Where the salt smell cheers the land;
Where the tide moves bright under boundless light,
And the surge on the glittering strand;
Where the children wade in the shallow pools,
Or run from the froth in play;
Where the swift little boats with milk-white wings
Are crossing the sapphire bay,
And the ship in full sail, with a fortunate gale,
Holds proudy on her way;
Where the nets are spread on the grass to dry,
And asleep, hard by, the fishermen lie,
Under the tent of the warm blue sky,
With the hushing wave on its golden floor
To sing their lullaby.
Down on the shore, on the stormy shore!
Beset by a growling sea,
Whose mad waves leap on the rocky steep
Like wolves up a traveller's tree;
Where the foam flies wide, and an angry blast
Blows the curlew off, with a screech;
Where the brown sea-wrack, torn up by the roots,
Is flung out of fishes' reach;
And the tall ship rolls on the hidden shoals,
And scatters her planks on the beach;
Where slate and straw through the village spin,
And a cottage fronts the fiercest din
With a sailor's wife sitting sad within,
Hearkening the wind and the water's roar,
Till at last her tears begin.
poem by William Allingham
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The Wreck of the Hesperus
It was the schooner Hesperus,
That sailed the wint'ry 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,
His pipe was in his mouth,
And watched how the veering flaw did blow
The smoke now West, now South.
Then up and spake an old Sailor,
Had sailed the Spanish Main,
"I pray thee put into yonder port,
For I fear a hurricane.
"Last night, the moon had a golden ring,
And tonight 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 North-east;
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;
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.
"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,
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
Towards the reef of Norman's Woe.
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.
She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool,
But the cruel rocks, they gored her sides
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;
And he saw her hair, like the brown seaweed,
On the billows fall and rise.
Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this
On the reef of Norman's Woe!
poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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The Bay Of Seven Islands
FROM the green Amesbury hill which bears the name
Of that half mythic ancestor of mine
Who trod its slopes two hundred years ago,
Down the long valley of the Merrimac,
Midway between me and the river's mouth,
I see thy home, set like an eagle's nest
Among Deer Island's immemorial pines,
Crowning the crag on which the sunset breaks
Its last red arrow. Many a tale and song,
Which thou bast told or sung, I call to mind,
Softening with silvery mist the woods and hills,
The out-thrust headlands and inreaching bays
Of our northeastern coast-line, trending where
The Gulf, midsummer, feels the chill blockade
Of icebergs stranded at its northern gate.
To thee the echoes of the Island Sound
Answer not vainly, nor in vain the moan
Of the South Breaker prophesying storm.
And thou hast listened, like myself, to men
Sea-periled oft where Anticosti lies
Like a fell spider in its web of fog,
Or where the Grand Bank shallows with the wrecks
Of sunken fishers, and to whom strange isles
And frost-rimmed bays and trading stations seem
Familiar as Great Neck and Kettle Cove,
Nubble and Boon, the common names of home.
So let me offer thee this lay of mine,
Simple and homely, lacking much thy play
Of color and of fancy. If its theme
And treatment seem to thee befitting youth
Rather than age, let this be my excuse
It has beguiled some heavy hours and called
Some pleasant memories up; and, better still,
Occasion lent me for a kindly word
To one who is my neighbor and my friend.
. . . . . . . . . .
The skipper sailed out of the harbor mouth,
Leaving the apple-bloom of the South
For the ice of the Eastern seas,
In his fishing schooner Breeze.
Handsome and brave and young was he,
And the maids of Newbury sighed to see
His lessening white sail fall
Under the sea's blue wall.
Through the Northern Gulf and the misty screen
Of the isles of Mingan and Madeleine,
St. Paul's and Blanc Sablon,
The little Breeze sailed on,
Backward and forward, along the shore
Of lorn and desolate Labrador,
And found at last her way
To the Seven Islands Bay.
The little hamlet, nestling below
Great hills white with lingering snow,
With its tin-roofed chapel stood
Half hid in the dwarf spruce wood;
Green-turfed, flower-sown, the last outpost
Of summer upon the dreary coast,
With its gardens small and spare,
Sad in the frosty air.
Hard by where the skipper's schooner lay,
A fisherman's cottage looked away
Over isle and bay, and. behind
On mountains dim-defined.
And there twin sisters, fair and young,
Laughed with their stranger guest, and sung
In their native tongue the lays
Of the old Provencal days.
Alike were they, save the faint outline
Of a scar on Suzette's forehead fine;
And both, it so befell,
Loved the heretic stranger well.
Both were pleasant to look upon,
But the heart of the skipper clave to one;
Though less by his eye than heart
He knew the twain apart.
Despite of alien race and creed,
Well did his wooing of Marguerite speed;
And the mother's wrath was vain
As the sister's jealous pain.
The shrill-tongued mistress her house forbade,
And solemn warning was sternly said
By the black-robed priest, whose word
As law the hamlet heard.
But half by voice and half by signs
The skipper said, 'A warm sun shines
On the green-banked Merrimac;
Wait, watch, till I come back.
'And when you see, from my mast head,
The signal fly of a kerchief red,
My boat on the shore shall wait;
Come, when the night is late.'
Ah! weighed with childhood's haunts and friends,
And all that the home sky overbends,
Did ever young love fail
To turn the trembling scale?
Under the night, on the wet sea sands,
Slowly unclasped their plighted hands
One to the cottage hearth,
And one to his sailor's berth.
What was it the parting lovers heard?
Nor leaf, nor ripple, nor wing of bird,
But a listener's stealthy tread
On the rock-moss, crisp and dead.
He weighed his anchor, and fished once more
By the black coast-line of Labrador;
And by love and the north wind driven,
Sailed back to the Islands Seven.
In the sunset's glow the sisters twain
Saw the Breeze come sailing in again;
Said Suzette, 'Mother dear,
The heretic's sail is here.'
'Go, Marguerite, to your room, and hide;
Your door shall be bolted!' the mother cried:
While Suzette, ill at ease,
Watched the red sign of the Breeze.
At midnight, down to the waiting skiff
She stole in the shadow of the cliff;
And out of the Bay's mouth ran
The schooner with maid and man.
And all night long, on a restless bed,
Her prayers to the Virgin Marguerite said
And thought of her lover's pain
Waiting for her in vain.
Did he pace the sands? Did he pause to hear
The sound of her light step drawing near?
And, as the slow hours passed,
Would he doubt her faith at last?
But when she saw through the misty pane,
The morning break on a sea of rain,
Could even her love avail
To follow his vanished sail?
Meantime the Breeze, with favoring wind,
Left the rugged Moisic hills behind,
And heard from an unseen shore
The falls of Manitou roar.
On the morrow's morn, in the thick, gray weather
They sat on the reeling deck together,
Lover and counterfeit,
Of hapless Marguerite.
With a lover's hand, from her forehead fair
He smoothed away her jet-black hair.
What was it his fond eyes met?
The scar of the false Suzette!
Fiercely he shouted: 'Bear away
East by north for Seven Isles Bay!'
The maiden wept and prayed,
But the ship her helm obeyed.
Once more the Bay of the Isles they found
They heard the bell of the chapel sound,
And the chant of the dying sung
In the harsh, wild Indian tongue.
A feeling of mystery, change, and awe
Was in all they heard and all they saw
Spell-bound the hamlet lay
In the hush of its lonely bay.
And when they came to the cottage door,
The mother rose up from her weeping sore,
And with angry gestures met
The scared look of Suzette.
'Here is your daughter,' the skipper said;
'Give me the one I love instead.'
But the woman sternly spake;
'Go, see if the dead will wake!'
He looked. Her sweet face still and white
And strange in the noonday taper light,
She lay on her little bed,
With the cross at her feet and head.
In a passion of grief the strong man bent
Down to her face, and, kissing it, went
Back to the waiting Breeze,
Back to the mournful seas.
Never again to the Merrimac
And Newbury's homes that bark came back.
Whether her fate she met
On the shores of Carraquette,
Miscou, or Tracadie, who can say?
But even yet at Seven Isles Bay
Is told the ghostly tale
Of a weird, unspoken sail,
In the pale, sad light of the Northern day
Seen by the blanketed Montagnais,
Or squaw, in her small kyack,
Crossing the spectre's track.
On the deck a maiden wrings her hands;
Her likeness kneels on the gray coast sands;
One in her wild despair,
And one in the trance of prayer.
She flits before no earthly blast,
The red sign fluttering from her mast,
Over the solemn seas,
The ghost of the schooner Breeze!
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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A Sea Dream
We saw the slow tides go and come,
The curving surf-lines lightly drawn,
The gray rocks touched with tender bloom
Beneath the fresh-blown rose of dawn.
We saw in richer sunsets lost
The sombre pomp of showery noons;
And signalled spectral sails that crossed
The weird, low light of rising moons.
On stormy eves from cliff and head
We saw the white spray tossed and spurned;
While over all, in gold and red,
Its face of fire the lighthouse turned.
The rail-car brought its daily crowds,
Half curious, half indifferent,
Like passing sails or floating clouds,
We saw them as they came and went.
But, one calm morning, as we lay
And watched the mirage-lifted wall
Of coast, across the dreamy bay,
And heard afar the curlew call,
And nearer voices, wild or tame,
Of airy flock and childish throng,
Up from the water's edge there came
Faint snatches of familiar song.
Careless we heard the singer's choice
Of old and common airs; at last
The tender pathos of his voice
In one low chanson held us fast.
A song that mingled joy and pain,
And memories old and sadly sweet;
While, timing to its minor strain,
The waves in lapsing cadence beat.
. . . . .
The waves are glad in breeze and sun;
The rocks are fringed with foam;
I walk once more a haunted shore,
A stranger, yet at home,
A land of dreams I roam.
Is this the wind, the soft sea wind
That stirred thy locks of brown?
Are these the rocks whose mosses knew
The trail of thy light gown,
Where boy and girl sat down?
I see the gray fort's broken wall,
The boats that rock below;
And, out at sea, the passing sails
We saw so long ago
Rose-red in morning's glow.
The freshness of the early time
On every breeze is blown;
As glad the sea, as blue the sky,--
The change is ours alone;
The saddest is my own.
A stranger now, a world-worn man,
Is he who bears my name;
But thou, methinks, whose mortal life
Immortal youth became,
Art evermore the same.
Thou art not here, thou art not there,
Thy place I cannot see;
I only know that where thou art
The blessed angels be,
And heaven is glad for thee.
Forgive me if the evil years
Have left on me their sign;
Wash out, O soul so beautiful,
The many stains of mine
In tears of love divine!
I could not look on thee and live,
If thou wert by my side;
The vision of a shining one,
The white and heavenly bride,
Is well to me denied.
But turn to me thy dear girl-face
Without the angel's crown,
The wedded roses of thy lips,
Thy loose hair rippling down
In waves of golden brown.
Look forth once more through space and time,
And let thy sweet shade fall
In tenderest grace of soul and form
On memory's frescoed wall,
A shadow, and yet all!
Draw near, more near, forever dear!
Where'er I rest or roam,
Or in the city's crowded streets,
Or by the blown sea foam,
The thought of thee is home!
. . . . .
At breakfast hour the singer read
The city news, with comment wise,
Like one who felt the pulse of trade
Beneath his finger fall and rise.
His look, his air, his curt speech, told
The man of action, not of books,
To whom the corners made in gold
And stocks were more than seaside nooks.
Of life beneath the life confessed
His song had hinted unawares;
Of flowers in traffic's ledgers pressed,
Of human hearts in bulls and bears.
But eyes in vain were turned to watch
That face so hard and shrewd and strong;
And ears in vain grew sharp to catch
The meaning of that morning song.
In vain some sweet-voiced querist sought
To sound him, leaving as she came;
Her baited album only caught
A common, unromantic name.
No word betrayed the mystery fine,
That trembled on the singer's tongue;
He came and went, and left no sign
Behind him save the song he sung.
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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The Aeolian Harp
_At The Surf Inn_
List the harp in window wailing
Stirred by fitful gales from sea:
Shrieking up in mad crescendo--
Dying down in plaintive key!
Listen: less a strain ideal
Than Ariel's rendering of the Real.
What that Real is, let hint
A picture stamped in memory's mint.
Braced well up, with beams aslant,
Betwixt the continents sails the _Phocion,_
For Baltimore bound from Alicant.
Blue breezy skies white fleeces fleck
Over the chill blue white-capped ocean:
From yard-arm comes--'Wreck ho, a
wreck!'
Dismasted and adrift,
Longtime a thing forsaken;
Overwashed by every wave
Like the slumbering kraken;
Heedless if the billow roar,
Oblivious of the lull,
Leagues and leagues from shoal or shore,
It swims--a levelled hull:
Bulwarks gone--a shaven wreck,
Nameless and a grass-green deck.
A lumberman: perchance, in hold
Prostrate pines with hemlocks rolled.
It has drifted, waterlogged,
Till by trailing weeds beclogged:
Drifted, drifted, day by day,
Pilotless on pathless way.
It has drifted till each plank
Is oozy as the oyster-bank:
Drifted, drifted, night by night,
Craft that never shows a light;
Nor ever, to prevent worse knell,
Tolls in fog the warning bell.
From collision never shrinking,
Drive what may through darksome smother;
Saturate, but never sinking,
Fatal only to the _other!_
Deadlier than the sunken reef
Since still the snare it shifteth,
Torpid in dumb ambuscade
Waylayingly it drifteth.
O, the sailors--O, the sails!
O, the lost crews never heard of!
Well the harp of Ariel wails
Thought that tongue can tell no word of!
poem by Herman Melville
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The Last Farewell
(words & music by roger whittaker - r.a. webster)
Theres a ship lies rigged and ready in the harbor
Tomorrow for old england she sails
Far away from your land of endless sunshine
To my land full of rainy skies and gales
And I shall be aboard that ship tomorrow
Though my heart is full of tears at this farewell
For you are beautiful, I have loved you dearly
More dearly than the spoken word can tell
For you are beautiful, I have loved you dearly
More dearly than the spoken word can tell
Ive heard theres a wicked war a-blazing
And the taste of war I know so very well
Even now I see the foreign flag a-raising
Their guns on fire as we sail into hell
I have no fear of death, it brings no sorrow
But how bitter will be this last farewell
For you are beautiful, I have loved you dearly
More dearly than the spoken word can tell
For you are beautiful, I have loved you dearly
More dearly than the spoken word can tell
Though death and darkness gather all about me
My ship be torn apart upon the seas
I shall smell again the fragrance of these islands
And the heaving waves that brought me once to thee
And should I return home safe again to england
I shall watch the english mist roll through the dale
For you are beautiful, I have loved you dearly
More dearly than the spoken word can tell
For you are beautiful, I have loved you dearly
More dearly than the spoken word can tell
song performed by by Elvis Presley
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Landing
THE great ship lantern-girdled.
The tender standing by;
The waning stars cloud-shrouded,
The land that we descry!
That pale land is our homeland,
And we are bound therefor;
On her lawns nor in her coppice
No birds as yet make stir.
But birds are
flying round us,
The white birds of the sea
It is the breeze of morning,
This that comes hummingly.
And like the talk that comes from
A room where a babe is born
Such clearness and such mystery
Are in words said on the morn,
Where, like a nation cloven,
In two our ranks divide:
One half on the high ship's bulwark,
One half by the tender's side;
Where, like a people sundered,
Who yet have each other's hail,
Faces look down from the bulwarks,
And look up from the tender's rail;
And names are called and spoken
'Nancy,' 'Mary,' 'Owen'!
'Good-bye, and keep your promise!'
'Farewell to you, my son!'
They are more spirit-stirring
Than any words that are
Remembered from the spokesmen
Of any avatar!
'Oh, all I had to tell you!'
'Ellen,' 'Michael,' 'Joan'-
'Good-bye, and God be with you!'
'And can it be you're gone!'
The great ship lantern-girdled,
Her engines thresh, immerse
The great ship that had station
Takes motion for her course.
Her little course the tender,
Our little ship, goes on
The stars they are fast waning,
But we'll land ere 'tis the dawn!
Green, greener grows the foreland
Across the slate-dark sea,
And I'll see faces, places
That have been dreams to me!
poem by Padraic Colum
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A Coarse Morning
OH the yellow boisterous sea,
The surging, chafing, murderous sea!
And the wind-gusts hurtle the torn clouds by,
On to the south through a shuddering sky,
And the bare black ships scud aloof from the land.
'Tis as like the day as can be,
When the ship came in sight that came never to strand,
The ship that was blown on the sunken sand—
And he coming back to me!
Oh the great white snake of foam,
The coiling, writhing, snake of white foam,
Hissing and huddering out in the bay,
Over the banks where the wrecked ship lay,
Over the sands where the dead may lie deep!
There are some in the churchyard loam,
Some two or three the sea flung to our keep:
Their mothers can sit by a grave to weep,
But my son never came home.
Never, never, living or dead—
Oh, never, Willie, living or dead,
Could you keep your word and come back to me!
Oh, my darling! As like this day as can be,
When the ship came in sight that came never to strand,
When the ship came rounding the head,
Close to the haven and close to the sand.—
And their graves are long green that were tossed to land.
Ah, 'Sure to come back,' he said!
poem by Augusta Davies Webster
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The Island Of Endless Play
Said Willie to Tom 'Let us hie away
To the wonderful Island of Endless Play.
It lies off the border of 'No School Land'
And abounds with pleasures, I understand.
There boys go swimming whenever they please
In a lovely river right under the trees.
And marbles are free, no one has to buy;
And kites of all sizes are ready to fly.
We sail down the Isthmus of Idle Delight,
We sail and we sail for a day and a night.
And then if favored by billows and breeze
We land in the harbor of Do-as-you-please.
And their lies the Island of Endless Play
With no one to say to us Must or Nay.
Books are not known in that land so fair,
Teachers are stoned if they set foot there.
Hurrah for the Island so glad and free,
That is the country for you and me.'
So away went Willie and Tom together
On a pleasure boat, in the lazy weather,
And they sailed in the teeth of a friendly breeze
Right into the harbor of 'Do-as-you-please!'
Where boats and tackle and marbles and kites
Were waiting them there in this Land of Delights.
They dwelt on the Island of Endless Play
For five long years; then one sad day
A strange dark ship sailed up to the strand,
And 'Ho! for the voyage to Stupid Land.'
The Captain cried with a terrible noise
As he seized the frightened and struggling boys,
And threw them into the dark Ship's hold,
And off and away sailed the Captain bold.
They vainly begged him to let them out,
He answered only with scoff and shout.
'Boys that don't study or work,' said he,
'Must sail one day down the Ignorant Sea
To Stupid Land by the No-Book strait,
With Captain Time on the Pitiless Fate.'
Then he let out the sails and away went the three,
Over the waters of Ignorant Sea.
Out and away to Stupid Land,
And they live there yet, I understand.
And there's where every one goes, they say,
Who seeks the Island of Endless Play.
poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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In The Enchanted Tower
THE waves in thunderous menace break
Upon the rocks below my tower,
And none will dare the Sea-king's power
And venture shipwreck for my sake.
Yet once,--my lamp a path of light
Across the darkling sea had cast--
I saw a sail; at last, at last,
It came towards me through the night.
My lamp had been the beacon set
To lead the ship through mist and foam,
The ship that came to take me home,
To that far land I half forget.
But since my tower is built so high,
And surf-robed rocks curl hid below,
I quenched my lamp--and, weeping low
I saw my ship go safely by!
poem by Edith Nesbit
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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A Forsaken Garden
IN a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,
At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee,
Walled round with rocks as an inland island,
The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.
A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses
The steep square slope of the blossomless bed
Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses
Now lie dead.
The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken,
To the low last edge of the long lone land.
If a step should sound or a word be spoken,
Would a ghost not rise at the strange guest's hand?
So long have the grey bare walks lain guestless,
Through branches and briars if a man make way,
He shall find no life but the sea-wind's, restless
Night and day.
The dense hard passage is blind and stifled
That crawls by a track none turn to climb
To the strait waste place that the years have rifled
Of all but the thorns that are touched not of time.
The thorns he spares when the rose is taken;
The rocks are left when he wastes the plain.
The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken,
These remain.
Not a flower to be pressed of the foot that falls not;
As the heart of a dead man the seed-plots are dry;
From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls not,
Could she call, there were never a rose to reply.
Over the meadows that blossom and wither
Rings but the note of a sea-bird's song;
Only the sun and the rain come hither
All year long.
The sun burns sere and the rain dishevels
One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath.
Only the wind here hovers and revels
In a round where life seems barren as death.
Here there was laughing of old, there was weeping,
Haply, of lovers none ever will know,
Whose eyes went seaward a hundred sleeping
Years ago.
Heart handfast in heart as they stood, "Look thither,"
Did he whisper? "look forth from the flowers to the sea;
For the foam-flowers endure when the rose-blossoms wither,
And men that love lightly may die---but we?"
And the same wind sang and the same waves whitened,
And or ever the garden's last petals were shed,
In the lips that had whispered, the eyes that had lightened,
Love was dead.
Or they loved their life through, and then went whither?
And were one to the endÑbut what end who knows?
Love deep as the sea as a rose must wither,
As the rose-red seaweed that mocks the rose.
Shall the dead take thought for the dead to love them ?
What love was ever as deep as a grave ?
They are loveless now as the grass above them
Or the wave.
All are at one now, roses and lovers,
Not known of the cliffs and the fields and the sea.
Not a breath of the time that has been hovers
In the air now soft with a summer to be.
Not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons hereafter
Of the flowers or the lovers that laugh now or weep,
When as they that are free now of weeping and laughter
We shall sleep.
Here death may deal not again for ever;
Here change may come not till all change end.
From the graves they have made they shall rise up never,
Who have left nought living to ravage and rend.
Earth, stones, and thorns of the wild ground growing,
While the sun and the rain live, these shall be;
Till a last wind's breath upon all these blowing
Roll the sea.
Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble,
Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink,
Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble
The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink,
Here now in his triumph where all things falter,
Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread,
As a god self-slain on his own strange altar,
Death lies dead.
poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Sea Of Dead Ships
A light from heaven flickers gently on the waves.
As a boat rocks merrily, above a sea of dead men’s graves.
Colours of the rainbows, spread fingers from the shore.
The sea is filled with beauty; it is also filled with lore.
Waves of blue, waves of green cause white waters on a rocky shore.
While the warming sun’s silvery gleam, heals any wanton sore.
Fishing boats, sails afloat, challenge the sparkling foam.
While everyman with heart lured by the sea, tries desperately not to roam.
The sea is my mistress, the sea is my light.
On a cold day’s darkness, the moon must guide me by night.
A sea full of temptation, a sea full of woe.
I set my sails a flight, to meet my friend or foe.
Dark storm clouds gather overhead, waves pound at my wooden boat.
I feel the cold salty shower, fighting wind and tide to keep afloat.
Rigging is now tangled, mast breaks leaving gnarled stump.
Oh, I curse you west wind and my broken water pump.
Water bailed with bucket, from never ending stream.
Oh, I curse the rudder, as it breaks from helm fast and clean.
I curse you mean sea, now I am cast a drift.
On my knees, I pray to heaven, for the wind to dropp and shift.
Days with no food and water, lie ahead of me.
I drift with tide and current, towards the Sargasso Sea.
A sea of weed entangled, around the entrails of dead ships.
Ships of great endurance, asleep on a green desert sit.
Brigand with barnacles galore lay wind beaten on its side.
I wonder what gauntlet, you oh dead ship did ride.
With guns blazing, from aft to fore.
Below your decks, what treasures do you store?
Ships of all shapes and sizes, the Sargasso has you trapped.
The sea of endless weed, never seen, nor ever mapped.
Into your great maw, I drift, helpless without wind.
Is this where I meet my maker?
For all that, I have sinned.
This is no stockade of refuge, no place I want to be.
In a boat without a sail, trapped in the Sargasso Sea.
Oh, let me steal from your great ships.
Wood to repair my sail, then please release me, from this land of bleached bones and windy wail.
Sea of a million raptures, that contains this floating hell.
Please, oh, please release me, from a place to which I fell.
I plead to you ole west wind, blow your saintly scorn.
Free me from this entangled weed, guide me to safe waters warm
Sky of a thousand clouds, darken as the night.
The scorn of the west wind has set my sails a flight.
My boat begins to rock, the bow dips and hails.
The west wind has answered my pleas, blown wind into my sails.
Boat held fast, by weeds tight grip.
I curse you Sargasso Sea, release my now strong boat.
Salty shower pelts my face, as from the weed my boat breaks free, from the Sargasso’s grip and dead ships of the sea.
Trade winds and currents strong, lead me from this sea of dead ships, to a refuge from the storm.
Lead me to still waters grip, so I may chart a way, back to my homeland.
That I may sail your sea, safely for another day.
Lead me back to my loved one, who keeps the fire warm.
So she will not climb widow’s wharf, or reap the widow’s mourn.
Lead me with your warm wind, each step along the way.
Lead me to her arms beckoning and warm, from which I promise I will not stray.
As for you sea of dead ships, you sail with legend and lore.
No more shall I sail with you, or break waters at your shore.
Once you had me firm within your grip, but I broke free of you,
and your sea of dead ships.
Thanks to the west wind that blew.
4 July 1978
poem by David Harris
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The Spaniards' Graves
O sailors, did sweet eyes look after you
The day you sailed away from sunny Spain?
Bright eyes that followed fading ship and crew,
Melting in tender rain?
Did no one dream of that drear night to be,
Wild with the wind, fierce with the stinging snow,
When on yon granite point that frets the sea,
The ship met her death-blow?
Fifty long years ago these sailors died:
(None know how many sleep beneath the waves)
Fourteen gray headstones, rising side by side,
Point out their nameless graves,-
Lonely, unknown, deserted, but for me,
And the wild birds that flit with mournful cry,
And sadder winds, and voices of the sea
That moans perpetually.
Wives, mothers, maidens, wistfully, in vain
Questioned the distance for the yearning sail,
That leaning landward, should have stretched again
White arms wide on the gale,
To bring back their beloved. Year by year,
Weary they watched, till youth and beauty passed,
And lustrous eyes grew dim and age drew near,
And hope was dead at last.
Still summer broods o'er that delicious land,
Rich, fragrant, warm with skies of golden glow:
Live any yet of that forsaken band
Who loved so long ago?
Spanish women, over the far seas,
Could I but show you where your dead repose!
Could I send tidings on this northern breeze
That strong and steady blows!
Dear dark-eyed sisters, you remember yet
These you have lost, but you can never know
One stands at their bleak graves whose eyes are wet
With thinking of your woe!
poem by Celia Thaxter
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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