Our sailor oft could scantily shift
To find a dinner plain and hearty;
But never changed the coin and gift
Of Bonaparte.

T. CAMPBELL.

THE HEROIC BOY.

(HE boy stood on the burning deck,
Whence all but he had fled;

The flames that lit the battle's wreck

Shone round him o'er the dead.

Yet beautiful and bright he stood,

As born to rule the storm;

A creature of heroic blood,

A brave though childlike form.

The flames rolled on-he would not go
Without his father's word;

That father, faint in death below,
His voice no longer heard.

He called aloud-"Say, father, say
If yet my task is done!"

He knew not that the chieftain lay

Unconscious of his son.

"Speak, father!" once again he cried,

"If I may yet be gone,"

And but the booming shots replied,

And fast the flames rolled on.

The Wreck of the Hesperus.

Upon his brow he felt their breath,
And in his waving hair,

And looked from that lone post of death

In still yet brave despair.

And shouted but once more aloud,

"My father, must I stay?"

While o'er him fast, through sail and shroud,
The wreathing fires made way.

They wrapped the ship in splendour wild,

They caught the flag on high,

And streamed above the gallant child,

Like banners in the sky.

There came a burst of thunder-cloud-
The boy-oh, where was he?
Ask of the winds, that far around

With fragments strewed the sea,

With mast, and helm, and pennon fair,
That well had borne their part;
But the noblest thing that perished there
Was that young faithful heart.

HEMANS.

133

THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS.

ST was the schooner Hesperus,

That sailed the wintry 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,

With his pipe 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 to-night 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.

The Wreck of the Hesperus.

"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,

But the father answered never a word,

A frozen corpse was he.

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.

Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed

That saved she might be ;

135

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
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 side
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!
Christ save us all from a death like this,

On the reef of Norman's Woe!

LONGFELLOW.