Down came the storm, and smote amain
The vessel in its strength;

She shuddered and paused like a frightened 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,

66

And bound her to the mast.

Oh, father! I hear the church bells ring; Oh say what may it be?" "'Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!" And he steered for the open sea.

"Oh, father! I hear the sound of guns ; Oh say what may it be?"

"Some ship in distress that cannot live In such an angry sea!"

"Oh, father! I see a gleaming light,
Oh 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 WRECK OF THE 66 HESPERUS."

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 waves
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
T'wards the reef of Norman's Woe.

53

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 sea-weed
On the billows fall and rise.

Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow;

Heav'n save us all from a death like this,

On the reef of Norman's Woe!

H. W. LONGFELLOW.