Classic Poem

See! There are tears upon her face —
Tears newly shed, and scarcely dried:
Close, in an agonised embrace,
She clasps the infant at her side.

Peace dwells in those soft-lidded eyes,
Those parted lips that faintly smile —
Peace, the foretaste of Paradise,
In heart too young for care or guile.

No peace that mother's features wear;
But quivering lip, and knotted brow,
And broken mutterings, all declare
The fearful dream that haunts her now.

The storm-wind, rushing through the sky,
Wails from the depths of cloudy space;
Shrill, piercing as the seaman's cry
When death and he are face to face.

Familiar tones are in the gale:
They ring upon her startled ear:
And quick and low she pants the tale
That tells of agony and fear:

" Still that phantom-ship is nigh —
With a vexed and life-like motion,
All beneath an angry sky,
Rocking on an angry ocean.

" Round the straining mast and shrouds
Throng the spirits of the storm:
Darkly seen through driving clouds,
Bends each gaunt and ghastly form.

" See! The good ship yields at last!
Dumbly yields, and fights no more;
Driving, in the frantic blast,
Headlong on the fatal shore.

" Hark! I hear her battered side,
With a low and sullen shock,
Dashed, amid the foaming tide,
Full upon a sunken rock.

" His face shines out against the sky,
Like a ghost, so cold and white;
With a dead despairing eye
Gazing through the gathered night.

" Is he watching, through the dark,
Where a mocking ghostly hand
Points a faint and feeble spark
Glimmering from the distant land?

" Sees he, in this hour of dread,
Hearth and home and wife and child?
Loved ones who, in summers fled,
Clung to him and wept and smiled?

" Reeling sinks the fated bark
To her tomb beneath the wave:
Must he perish in the dark —
Not a hand stretched out to save?

" See the spirits, how they crowd!
Watching death with eyes that burn!
Waves rush in — — " she shrieks aloud,
Ere her waking sense return.

The storm is gone: the skies are clear:
Hush'd is that bitter cry of pain:
The only sound, that meets her ear,
The heaving of the sullen main.

Though heaviness endure the night,
Yet joy shall come with break of day
She shudders with a strange delight —
The fearful dream is pass'd away.

She wakes: the gray dawn streaks the dark:
With early song the copses ring:
Far off she hears the watch-dog bark
A joyful bark of welcoming!