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,85 In the midnight and the snow! Christ save us all from a death like this, On the reef of Norman's Woe!
[PAUL REVERE'S RIDE]
Listen, my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,[308] On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year.5
He said to his friend, "If the British march By land or sea from the town to-night, Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch Of the North Church[309] tower as a signal light,— One, if by land, and two, if by sea;10 And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm, For the country-folk to be up and arm."
Then he said, "Good night!" and with muffled oar15 Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore, Just as the moon rose over the bay, Where swinging wide at her moorings lay The Somerset, British man-of-war; A phantom ship, with each mast and spar20 Across the moon like a prison bar And a huge black hulk, that was magnified By its own reflection in the tide.
Meanwhile his friend, through alley and street, Wanders and watches with eager ears,25 Till in the silence around him he hears The muster of men at the barrack door, The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet, And the measured tread of the grenadiers, Marching down to their boats on the shore.30
Then he climbed to the tower of the church, Up the wooden stairs with stealthy tread, To the belfry-chamber overhead, And startled the pigeons from their perch On the sombre rafters, that round him made35 Masses and moving shapes of shade,— Up the trembling ladder, steep and tall, To the highest window in the wall, Where he paused to listen and look down A moment on the roofs of the town,40 And the moonlight flowing over all.
Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead, In their night-encampment on the hill, Wrapped in silence so deep and still That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,45 The watchful night-wind, as it went Creeping along from tent to tent, And seeming to whisper, "All is well!" A moment only he feels the spell Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread50 Of the lonely belfry and the dead; For suddenly all his thoughts are bent On a shadowy something far away, Where the river widens to meet the bay,— A line of black that bends and floats55 On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.