Page:The Poems of Henry Kendall (1920).djvu/382

 In the boat I was ordered to go—I was not more afraid than the rest,

But a husband will falter, you know, with the love of his life at his breast;

My captain was angry a space, but soon he grew tender in tone—

Perhaps there had flashed by his face a wife and a child of his own.

I was weak for some moments, and cried; but only one hope was in life;

The hood upon baby I tied—I fastened the shawl on my wife.

The skipper took charge of the child—he stuck to his word till the last;

But only this hood on the wild, bitter shore of the sea had been cast.

In the place of a coward, who shook like a leaf in the quivering boat,

A seat by the rowlocks I took; but the sea had me soon by the throat,

The surge gripped me fast by the neck—in a ring, and a roll, and a roar,

I was cast like a piece of the wreck, on a bleak, beaten, shelterless shore.

And there were my darlings on board for the rest of that terrible day,

And I watched and I prayed to the Lord, as never before I could pray.

The windy hills stared at the black, heavy clouds coming over the wave;

My girl was expecting me back, but where was my power to save?

Ah! where was my power, when Death was glaring at me from the reef?

I cried till I gasped for my breath, aloof with a maddening grief.

We couldn't get back to the deck: I wanted to go, but the sea

Dashed over the sides of the wreck, and carried my darling from me.