“The tinklers, aye, ha! ha! those merry bells,
We carried up from France to Limerick,—
And nearly lost in a confounded gale,—
Aye, aye, old top, by these there hangs a tale,—
I heard from one who wounded lay and sick,—
A soldier who had seen a hundred hells.”
“Those bells were taken in a bloody war
Sir,—what is that to thee?—another drink!”
Sordino forced a laugh, and ordered wine,—
A bottle of old port—none did decline,
But drank, until the weak began to wink,
And Silence made encroachment round the bar.
The sailor bibbed the longest, ate his roast,
And told Sordino, how the bells were sold
To a great churchman in the Irish isle,
That they are ringing daily from a pile
Most venerable, whence no price of gold
Can e’er return them to their native coast.
Sordino knew, they were his own, and smiled
To learn the place where strangely they had landed,
And when the sailor swore it all was true,
Sordino from the company withdrew,
But not before it was of him demanded,
That what he heard for ever must be “tiled.”
XXVII
Sordino looking for his boy that night,
Found him departed, whither, none could tell;
They sought him in the tavern and the street,
But all in vain; the watchman on his beat
Was queried, as he passed and cried: “All’s well!”
And laughingly replied: “He’s out of sight!”
The boy had weary grown and sick for home,
When he his master saw with drunkards douce,
And dared the denseness of the fog, to find
That place which daily occupied his mind,—
The little cottage ’mongst the trees, recluse,
Seemed grander than the city’s pillard dome.
A dog might find its way, but not a child,
Through such a maze, bewildering and weird;
He thought, he surely knew the homeward road,
And eagerly, for hours, he onward strode,
But only to discover, what he feared:
He was as lost as ’mid a forest wild.
The Thames was like a spectral realm of sound
And shapes: The masts of many ships at tow
Were dimly visible, and larger seemed,—
Like mighty giants, as the moonlight beamed
Into the woolly fog. The sounds below:—
The river’s song, and baying of a hound.
All else was silent till a sailor coughed
And damned the dog which thus disturbed his sleep;
And now the wand’ring lad called out in fear:
“I’m lost, oh, help me, who-soe’er is near!”
To which a voice arose, as from the deep:
“It is a lubber straying from his croft.”