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LESSON 5
IT was the schooner “Hesperus”
That sailed the wintry sea,
And the skipper
had taken his little daughter
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.
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 daughter,
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;
O say, what may it be?” —
“’Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!”
And he steered for the open sea.
“O father! I hear the sound of guns;
O say, what may it be?” —
“Some ship in distress, that cannot live
In such an angry sea!”
“O father! I see a gleaming light;
O say, what may it be?”
But the father answered never a word, —
A frozen corpse was he!
And fast, through the midnight dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept
Towards the reef of Norman’s
oe.
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.
At day-break on the bleak sea-beach
A flsherman 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.
— LONGFELLOW
schoon´-er rough´-est gleam´-ing i´-ci-cles
Hes´-pe-rus bro´-ken an´-swered fish´er-man
com´-pa-ny dis-tress´ fro´-zen a-ghast´
shud´-dered an´-gry whis´-tling maid´-en
At day-break on the bleak sea-beach
A fi sherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair
Lashed close to a drifting mast.