Lad and Lassie
The Inchcape Rock.
The man is wrecked and his ship is sunken before he ever steps on board or sees the water if his heart is hard and his estimate of human beings low. “The Inchcape Rock” is a thrust at hard-heartedness. “What is the use of life?” To bear one another’s burdens, to develop a genius for pulling people through hard places—that’s the use of life. It is the last resort of a mean mind to crack jokes that wreck innocent voyagers on life’s sea. (1774-1843.)
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No stir in the air, no stir in the sea, The ship was still as she could be; Her sails from heaven received no motion; Her keel was steady in the ocean. Without either sign or sound of their shock, The waves flowed over the Inchcape Rock; So little they rose, so little they fell, They did not move the Inchcape Bell. The Abbot of Aberbrothok Had placed that Bell on the Inchcape Rock; On a buoy in the storm it floated and swung, And over the waves its warning rung. When the Rock was hid by the surge’s swell, The mariners heard the warning Bell; And then they knew the perilous Rock, And blest the Abbot of Aberbrothok. The sun in heaven was shining gay; All things were joyful on that day; The sea-birds screamed as they wheeled round, And there was joyance in their sound. The buoy of the Inchcape Bell was seen, A dark spot on the ocean green; Sir Ralph the Rover walked his deck, And he fixed his eye on the darker speck. He felt the cheering power of spring; It made him whistle, it made him sing: His heart was mirthful to excess, But the Rover’s mirth was wickedness. His eye was on the Inchcape float. Quoth he, “My men, put out the boat And row me to the Inchcape Rock, And I’ll plague the Abbot of Aberbrothok.” The boat is lowered, the boatmen row, And to the Inchcape Rock they go; Sir Ralph bent over from the boat, And he cut the Bell from the Inchcape float. Down sank the Bell with a gurgling sound; The bubbles rose and burst around. Quoth Sir Ralph, “The next who comes to the Rock Won’t bless the Abbot of Aberbrothok.” Sir Ralph the Rover sailed away; He scoured the sea for many a day; And now grown rich with plundered store, He steers his course for Scotland’s shore. So thick a haze o’erspread the sky, They cannot see the sun on high: The wind hath blown a gale all day, At evening it hath died away. On the deck the Rover takes his stand; So dark it is they see no land. Quoth Sir Ralph, “It will be brighter soon, For there is the dawn of the rising moon.” “Canst hear,” said one, “the broken roar? For methinks we should be near the shore.” “Now where we are I cannot tell, But I wish I could hear the Inchcape Bell.” They hear no sound; the swell is strong; Though the wind hath fallen, they drift along Till the vessel strikes with a shivering shock: “O Christ! it is the Inchcape Rock!” Sir Ralph the Rover tore his hair, He curst himself in his despair: The waves rush in on every side, The ship is sinking beneath the tide. But, even in his dying fear, One dreadful sound could the Rover hear,— A sound as if with the Inchcape Bell The Devil below was ringing his knell. |
Robert Southey.
The Finding of the Lyre.
Once a year my pupils teach me “The Finding of the Lyre.” By the time I have learned it they know the meaning of every line and have caught the spirit of the verse. There is an ancient “lyre,” or violin, made in northern Africa, in the possession of a Boston lady, and I have found the mud-turtle rattle among the Indians on the Indian reservation at Syracuse, New York. They use it as a musical instrument in their Thanksgiving dances. The poem helps to build an interest in history and mythology while it develops a child’s reverence and insight. (1819-91.)
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There lay upon the ocean’s shore What once a tortoise served to cover; A year and more, with rush and roar, The surf had rolled it over, Had played with it, and flung it by, As wind and weather might decide it, Then tossed it high where sand-drifts dry Cheap burial might provide it. It rested there to bleach or tan, The rains had soaked, the sun had burned it; With many a ban the fisherman Had stumbled o’er and spurned it; And there the fisher-girl would stay, Conjecturing with her brother How in their play the poor estray Might serve some use or other. So there it lay, through wet and dry, As empty as the last new sonnet, Till by and by came Mercury, And, having mused upon it, “Why, here,” cried he, “the thing of things In shape, material, and dimension! Give it but strings, and, lo, it sings, A wonderful invention!” So said, so done; the chords he strained, And, as his fingers o’er them hovered, The shell disdained a soul had gained, The lyre had been discovered. O empty world that round us lies, Dead shell, of soul and thought forsaken, Brought we but eyes like Mercury’s, In thee what songs should waken! |
James Russell Lowell.