1. Ir was the schooner Hesperus

That sailed the wintry sea,

And the skipper had taken his little daughtér

To bear him company.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. Then up and spake an old sailór
Had sailed the Spanish main,

"I pray thee put into yonder port,
For I fear a hurricane.

5. "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.

6. Colder and louder blew the wind, A gale from the northeast;

The snow fell hissing in the brine,

And the billows frothed like yeast.

7. 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.

8. "Come hither! come hither! my little daughtér, And do not tremble so;

For I can weather the roughest gale

That ever wind did blow."

9. 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.

10. “O father! I hear the church-bells ring;
O say, what may it be?"

"'T is a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!"
And he steered for the open sea.

11. "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!"

12. "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.

13. Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark, With his face to the skies,

The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow
On his fixed and glassy eyes.

14. 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.

15. 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.

16. 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.

17. The breakers were right beneath her bows,
She drifted a dreary wreck,

And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her deck.

18. 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.

19. 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!

20. 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.

21. 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.

22. 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!

LANGUAGE EXERCISE.

I. The scene of the wreck of the schooner Hesperus is described by the poet (Longfellow) as having been the reef of Norman's Woe" (15). This reef is a rock lying near the surface of the water in Massachusetts Bay, near Cape Ann. "The Spanish main" (4) means properly the main land, ― the region around the Gulf of Mexico; but Longfellow here uses 66 main " in the sense of sea.

In this ballad some words and forms of words are used that belong more specially to poetry: as, "ope" (2); "flaw" (3); "brine" (6). Explain each.

In stanza 17 find the full form of “drear” (15).

In ballads poets sometimes give words a different accent from that which they have in prose, and sometimes emphasize words that would not be emphasized in prose. Thus, "daughtér" (1); "sailór " (4); “with his pipe" (3); “from the northeast" (6).

Explain "like the dawn of day " (2) (what color?); never a word; " (12) "stilled the wave" (14); "sheeted ghost" (15); "went by the board" (19).

II. The skipper he stood" (3); here the two subjects "skipper" and "he" would be considered false grammar in prose,