’Twas all in vain, ’twas all in vain! the sea rushed o’er the deck,
And shattered with the beating surf, down went the parting wreck.
The moment that the wreck went down, my father seized me fast,
And leaping ’mid the thundering waves, seized on the broken mast.
I knew not how he bore me up, my senses seemed to swim,
A shuddering horror chilled my brain, and stiffened every limb.
What next I knew was how at morn, on a bleak and barren shore,
Out of a hundred mariners, were living only four.
I looked around like one who wakes from dreams of fierce alarm,
And round my body still I felt, firm locked, my father’s arm.