She struck where the white and fleecy waves Looked soft as carded wool; But the cruel rocks they gored her side Like the horns of an angry bull.
Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice, With the mast went by the board; Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank— Ho! ho! the breakers roared!
At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach, A fisherman stood aghast, To see the form of a maiden fair, Lashed close to a drifting mast.
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, In the midnight and the snow; Christ save us all from a death like this, On the reef of Norman's Woe!
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.
THE SECOND MATE.
"Ho, there! Fisherman, hold your hand! Tell me, what is that far away,— There, where over the isle of sand Hangs the mist-cloud sullen and gray? See! it rocks with a ghastly life, Rising and rolling through clouds of spray, Right in the midst of the breakers' strife,— Tell me what is it, Fisherman, pray?"
"That, good sir, was a steamer stout As ever paddled around Cape Race; And many's the wild and stormy bout She had with the winds, in that self-same place; But her time was come; and at ten o'clock Last night she struck on that lonesome shore; And her sides were gnawed by the hidden rock, And at dawn this morning she was no more."
"Come, as you seem to know, good man, The terrible fate of this gallant ship, Tell me about her all that you can; And here's my flask to moisten your lip. Tell me how many she had aboard,— Wives, and husbands, and lovers true,— How did it fare with her human hoard? Lost she many, or lost she few?"