‘Come hither! come hither! my little daughtèr. And do not tremble so; For I can weather the roughest gale That ever wind did blow.’
He wrapp’d her warm in his seaman’s coat Against the stinging blast; He cut a rope from a broken spar, And bound her to the mast.
‘O father! I hear the church-bells ring, O say, what may it be?’ ‘’Tis a fog-bell, on a rock-bound coast!’— And he steer’d for the open sea.
‘O father! I hear the sound of guns, O say, what may it be?’ ‘Some ship in distress that cannot live In such an angry sea!’
‘O father! I see a gleaming light, O say, what may it be?’ But the father answered never a word, A frozen corpse was he.
Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark, With his face turned to the skies, The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow On his fixed and glassy eyes.
Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed That savèd she might be; And she thought of Christ, who stilled the waves On the Lake of Galilee.
And fast through the midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept Towards the reef of Norman’s Woe.
And ever the fitful gusts between A sound came from the land; It was the sound of the trampling surf, On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.