Golden Numbers Part 61

"Hold! If 'twas wrong, the wrong is mine; Besides, he may lie in the brine; And could he write from the grave?

Tut, man! what would you have?"

"Gone twenty years,--a long, long cruise!

'Twas wicked thus your love to abuse!

But if the lad still live, And come back home, think you you can Forgive him?" "Miserable man!

You're mad as the sea, you rave!

What have I to forgive?"

The sailor twitched his s.h.i.+rt so blue, And from within his bosom drew The kerchief. She was wild.

"O G.o.d, my Father! is it true?

My little lad, my Elihu!

My blessed boy, my child!

My dead, my living child!"

ALICE CARY.

_The Wreck of the Hesperus_

It 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, His pipe was in his mouth, And he watched how the veering flaw did blow The smoke now West, now South.

Then up and spake an old Sailr 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 colder 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; 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 s.h.i.+p 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 gla.s.sy 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 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 gla.s.s 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 sea-weed, 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!

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

_A Greyport Legend_

They ran through the streets of the seaport town; They peered from the decks of the s.h.i.+ps that lay: The cold sea-fog that comes whitening down Was never as cold or white as they.

"Ho, Starbuck, and Pinckney, and Tenterden, Run for your shallops, gather your men, Scatter your boats on the lower bay!"

Good cause for fear! In the thick midday The hulk that lay by the rotting pier, Filled with the children in happy play, Parted its moorings and drifted clear; Drifted clear beyond reach or call,-- Thirteen children they were in all,-- All adrift in the lower bay!

Said a hard-faced skipper, "G.o.d help us all!

She will not float till the turning tide!"

Said his wife, "My darling will hear _my_ call, Whether in sea or heaven she bide!"

And she lifted a quavering voice and high, Wild and strange as a sea-bird's cry, Till they shuddered and wondered at her side.

The fog drove down on each laboring crew, Veiled each from each and the sky and sh.o.r.e; There was not a sound but the breath they drew, And the lap of water and creak of oar.

And they felt the breath of the downs fresh blown O'er leagues of clover and cold gray stone, But not from the lips that had gone before.

They came no more. But they tell the tale That, when fogs are thick on the harbor reef, The mackerel-fishers shorten sail; For the signal they know will bring relief, For the voices of children, still at play In a phantom-hulk that drifts alway Through channels whose waters never fail.

It is but a foolish s.h.i.+pman's tale, A theme for a poet's idle page; But still, when the mists of doubt prevail, And we lie becalmed by the sh.o.r.es of age, We hear from the misty troubled sh.o.r.e The voice of the children gone before, Drawing the soul to its anchorage!

BRET HARTE.

_The Glove and the Lions_

King Francis was a hearty king, and loved a royal sport, And one day as his lions fought, sat looking on the court; The n.o.bles filled the benches, with the ladies in their pride, And 'mongst them sat the Count de Lorge, with one for whom he sighed: And truly 'twas a gallant thing to see that crowning show, Valour and love, and a king above, and the royal beasts below.

Ramp'd and roar'd the lions, with horrid laughing jaws; They bit, they glared, gave blows like beams, a wind went with their paws; With wallowing might and stifled roar they rolled on one another, Till all the pit with sand and mane was in a thunderous smother; The b.l.o.o.d.y foam above the bars came whisking through the air; Said Francis then, "Faith, gentlemen, we're better here than there."