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15

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25

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 cables' length.

"Come hither! come hither! my little daughtèr, 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,
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 far 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 a 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 mast went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank,
Ho! ho! the breakers roared!

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5

1Ο

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!

5

IO

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER°

IN SCHOOL DAYS

STILL Sits the school-house by the road,
A ragged beggar sunning,

Around it still the sumachs grow,
And blackberry vines are running.

Within the master's desk is seen,
Deep scarred by raps official;
The warping floor, the battered seats,
The jack-knives' carved initial;

The charcoal frescoes on its wall;

Its door's worn sill, betraying

The feet that creeping slow to school,
Went storming out to playing.

Long years ago, a winter sun
Shone over it at setting,
Lit up its western window-panes,
And low eaves' icy fretting.

It touched the tangled golden curls,
And brown eyes, full of grieving,
Of one who still her steps delayed

When all the school were leaving.

For near her stood the little boy,
Her childish favor singled,

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His cap pulled low upon a face

Where pride and shame were mingled.