Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/153

THE LORD'S-DAY GALE The Grin'stone grinds the bones of some,

And Coffin Isle is craped with foam;—

On Deadman's shore are fearful shapes!

O, what can live on the open sea,

Or moored in port the gale outride?

The very craft that at anchor be

Are dragged along by the swollen tide!

The great storm-wave came rolling west,

And tossed the vessels on its crest:

The ancient bounds its might defied!

The ebb to check it had no power;

The surf ran up an untold height;

It rose, nor yielded, hour by hour,

A night and day, a day and night;

Far up the seething shores it cast

The wrecks of hull and spar and mast,

The strangled crews,—a woful sight!

There were twenty and more of Breton sail

Fast anchored on one mooring-ground;

Each lay within his neighbor's hail

When the thick of the tempest closed them round:

All sank at once in the gaping sea,—

Somewhere on the shoals their corses be,

The foundered hulks, and the seamen drowned.

On reef and bar our schooners drove

Before the wind, before the swell;

By the steep sand-cliffs their ribs were stove,—

Long, long, their crews the tale shall tell!

Of the Gloucester fleet are wrecks threescore;

Of the Province sail two hundred more

Were stranded in that tempest fell.

The bedtime bells in Gloucester Town

That Sabbath night rang soft and clear; 123