The waves roll’d long and high
In the fathomless Biscay,
And the rising breeze swept sullen by,
And the day closed heavily.
Our ship was tight and brave,
Well trimm’d and sailing free,
And she flew along on the mountain wave,
An eagle of the sea.
The red cross fluttering yet,
We lower’d the noble sign,
For the bell had struck, it was past sunset,
And the moon began to shine.
Her light was fitful, flung
From a sky of angry gloom,
Thick hurrying clouds o’er the waters hung,
Their hue was of the tomb.
Yet now and then a gleam
Broke through of her silent ray,
And lit around with her soften’d beam
Some spot of that plumbless bay.
O’er the bulwark’s side we heard
The proud ship break the spray,
While her shrouds and sheets by the wild winds stirr’d,
Made music mournfully.
And we talk’d of battles past,
Of shipwreck, rock, and shore,
Of ports where peril or chance had cast
Our sail the wide world o’er.
The watch look’d by the lee,
A shapeless log was seen,
A helmless ship it appear’d to be,
And it lay the waves between.
Oh ’twas a fearful sight
That helpless thing to see,
Swimming mastless and lone at high midnight
A corps on the black, black sea!
There were souls, perchance, on board,
And heaving yet their breath,
Men whose cry, amid their despair, was heard
Not to meet ocean-death.