| |
| I SAW her first abreast the Boston Light | |
| At anchor; she had just come in, turned head, | |
| And sent her hawsers creaking, clattering down. | |
| I was so near to where the hawse-pipes fed | |
| The cable out from her careening bow, | 5 |
| I moved up on the swell, shut steam and lay | |
| Hove to in my old launch to look at her. | |
| She’d come in light, a-skimming up the Bay | |
| Like a white ghost with topsails bellying full; | |
| And all her noble lines from bow to stern | 10 |
| Made music in the wind; it seemed she rode | |
| The morning air like those thin clouds that turn | |
| Into tall ships when sunrise lifts the clouds | |
| From calm sea-courses. | |
| |
| There, in smoke-smudged coats, | 15 |
| Lay funnelled liners, dirty fishing-craft, | |
| Blunt cargo-luggers, tugs, and ferry-boats. | |
| Oh, it was good in that black-scuttled lot | |
| To see the Frye come lording on her way | |
| Like some old queen that we had half forgot | 20 |
| Come to her own. A little up the Bay | |
| The Fort lay green, for it was springtime then; | |
| The wind was fresh, rich with the spicy bloom | |
| Of the New England coast that tardily | |
| Escapes, late April, from an icy tomb. | 25 |
| The State-house glittered on old Beacon Hill, | |
| Gold in the sun…. ’T was all so fair awhile; | |
| But she was fairest—this great square-rigged ship | |
| That had blown in from some far happy isle | |
| On from the shores of the Hesperides. | 30 |
| |
| They caught her in a South Atlantic road | |
| Becalmed, and found her hold brimmed up with wheat; | |
| “Wheat’s contrabrand,” they said, and blew her hull | |
| To pieces, murdered one of our staunch fleet, | |
| Fast dwindling, of the big old sailing ships | 35 |
| That carry trade for us on the high sea | |
| And warped out of each harbor in the States. | |
| It was n’t law, so it seems strange to me— | |
| A big mistake. Her keel’s struck bottom now | |
| And her four masts sunk fathoms, fathoms deep | 40 |
| To Davy Jones. The dank seaweed will root | |
| On her oozed decks, and the cross-surges sweep | |
| Through the set sails; but never, never more | |
| Her crew will stand away to brace and trim, | |
| Nor sea-blown petrels meet her thrashing up | 45 |
| To windward on the Gulf Stream’s stormy rim; | |
| Never again she’ll head a no’theast gale | |
| Or like a spirit loom up, sliding dumb, | |
| And ride in safe beyond the Boston Light, | |
| To make the harbor glad because she’s come. | 50 |
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