| |
| SAILING away! | |
| Losing the breath of the shores in May, | |
| Dropping down from the beautiful bay, | |
| Over the sea-slope vast and gray! | |
| And the skipper’s eyes with a mist are blind; | 5 |
| For a vision comes on the rising wind, | |
| Of a gentle face, that he leaves behind, | |
| And a heart that throbs through the fog-bank dim, | |
| Thinking of him. | |
| |
| Far into night | 10 |
| He watches the gleam of the lessening light | |
| Fixed on the dangerous island height, | |
| That bars the harbor he loves from sight. | |
| And he wishes, at dawn, he could tell the tale | |
| Of how they had weathered the southwest gale, | 15 |
| To brighten the cheek that had grown so pale | |
| With a wakeful night among spectres grim,— | |
| Terrors for him. | |
| |
| Yo-heave-yo! | |
| Here ’s the Bank where the fishermen go. | 20 |
| Over the schooner’s sides they throw | |
| Tackle and bait to the deeps below. | |
| And Skipper Ben in the water sees, | |
| When its ripples curl to the light land breeze, | |
| Something that stirs like his apple-trees; | 25 |
| And two soft eyes that beneath them swim, | |
| Lifted to him. | |
| |
| Hear the wind roar, | |
| And the rain through the slit sails tear and pour! | |
| “Steady! we ’ll scud by the Cape Ann shore, | 30 |
| Then hark to the Beverly bells once more!” | |
| And each man worked with the will of ten; | |
| While up in the rigging, now and then, | |
| The lightning glared in the face of Ben, | |
| Turned to the black horizon’s rim, | 35 |
| Scowling on him. | |
| |
| Into his brain | |
| Burned with the iron of hopeless pain, | |
| Into thoughts that grapple, and eyes that strain, | |
| Pierces the memory, cruel and vain! | 40 |
| Never again shall he walk at ease, | |
| Under his blossoming apple-trees, | |
| That whisper and sway to the sunset breeze, | |
| While the soft eyes float where the sea-gulls skim, | |
| Gazing with him. | 45 |
| |
| How they went down | |
| Never was known in the still old town. | |
| Nobody guessed how the fisherman brown, | |
| With the look of despair that was half a frown, | |
| Faced his fate in the furious night,— | 50 |
| Faced the mad billows with hunger white, | |
| Just within hail of the beacon-light | |
| That shone on a woman sweet and trim, | |
| Waiting for him. | |
| |
| Beverly bells, | 55 |
| Ring to the tide as it ebbs and swells! | |
| His was the anguish a moment tells,— | |
| The passionate sorrow death quickly knells. | |
| But the wearing wash of a lifelong woe | |
| Is left for the desolate heart to know, | 60 |
| Whose tides with the dull years come and go | |
| Till hope drifts dead to its stagnant brim, | |
| Thinking of him. | |
| |
