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It was the
schooner Hesperus,
That sailed the wint'ry 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 watched how
the veering flaw did blow
The smoke now West, now
South.
Then up and spake an old Sailor,
Had
sailed the Spanish Main,
"I pray thee put into yonder
port,
For I fear a hurricane.
"Last night, the
moon had a golden ring,
And tonight no moon we see!"
The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe,
And a
scornful laugh laughed he.
Colder and louder blew
the wind,
A gale from the North-east;
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 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 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 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 seaweed,
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!
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