We stopped to see this amazing battered old boat at Portbail today......sad but so beautiful too. We must have driven past it a hundred times but only today for the first time we walked across the beach to look closer.
The Wreck of Hesperus
It was the schooner Hesperus,
That sailed the wintry
sea;
And the skipper had taken his
little daughtèr,
To bear him company.
Blue were her eyes as the
fairy-flax,
Her cheeks like the dawn
of day,
And her bosom white as the
hawthorn buds,
That ope in the month of
May.
The skipper he stood beside
the helm,
His pipe was in his
mouth,
And he watched how the veering
flaw did blow
The smoke now West, now
South.
Then up and spake an old
Sailòr,
Had sailed to the
Spanish Main,
"I pray thee, put into yonder
port,
For I fear a hurricane.
"Last night, the moon had a
golden ring,
And to-night no moon we
see!"
The skipper, he blew a whiff
from his pipe,
And a scornful laugh
laughed he.
Colder and louder blew the
wind,
A gale from the
Northeast,
The snow fell hissing in the
brine,
And the billows frothed
like yeast.
Down came the storm, and smote
amain
The vessel in its
strength;
She shuddered and paused, like
a frighted steed,
Then leaped her cable's
length.
"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 wrapped 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,
Oh say, what may it be?"
"'T is a fog-bell on a
rock-bound coast!" —
And he steered for the
open sea.
"O father! I hear the sound of
guns,
Oh say, what may it be?"
"Some ship in distress, that
cannot live
In such an angry sea!"
"O father! I see a gleaming
light,
Oh 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 wave
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
Tow'rds 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.
The breakers were right
beneath her bows,
She drifted a dreary
wreck,
And a whooping billow swept
the crew
Like icicles from her
deck.
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 masts 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!
