Romance "Gone twenty years, a long, long cruise! and 'Twas wicked thus your love to abuse! Reality But if the lad still live, And come back home, think you you can You're mad as the sea, you rave! The sailor twitched his shirt so blue, The kerchief. She was wild. 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 Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax, Her checks 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, And he watched how the veering flaw did blow The sinoke now West, now South. Then up and spake an old Sailòr "Last night the moon had a golden ring, And to-night no moon we see!" The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe, Colder and colder blew the wind, And the billows frothed like yeast. Down came the storm, and smote amain She shuddered and paused like a frighted steed, "Come hither! come hither! my little daughter. For I can weather the roughest gale That ever wind did blow." He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat Romance and Reality Romance He cut a rope from a broken spar, and Reality And bound her to the mast. "O father! I hear the church-bells ring; 66 ""T is a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!' 66 "O father! I hear the sound of guns; "Some ship in distress, that cannot live "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, The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave And fast through the midnight dark and drear, Like a sheeted ghost the vessel swept Towards the reef of Norman's Woe. And ever the fitful gusts between It was the sound of the trampling surf On the rocks and the hard sea-sand. The breakers were right beneath her bows, 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, 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, And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed, Such was the wreck of the Hesperus, In the midnight and the snow! Romance and Reality Romance Christ save us all from a death like this and On the reef of Norman's Woe! Reality HENRY WADSWORTH LONG FELLOW. A Greyport Legend They ran through the streets of the seaport town; lay: The cold sea-fog that comes whitening down "Ho, Starbuck, and Pinckney, and Ten- Run for your shallops, gather your men. Scatter your boats on the lower bay!" Good cause for fear! In the thick midday All adrift in the lower bay! Said a hard-faced skipper, "God help us all! |