Page:Poems, now first collected, Stedman, 1897.djvu/169

CASTLE ISLAND LIGHT The old man hoar stands on the shore

And bodes the withering gale,

Or wonders whence from the distant world

Will come the next dim sail.

From the Northern Main, from England,

From France, the craft go by;

Yet sometimes one will stay her course

That must his wants supply.

III

In a Christmas storm the "Claribel" struck

At night, on the Pelican Shoal,

But the keeper's wife heard not the guns

And the bell's imploring toll.

She died ere the gale went down,

Wept by her daughters three—

Sun-flecked, yet fair, with their English hair,

Nymphs of the wind and sea.

With sail and oar some island shore

At will their skiffs might gain, 149