Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/360

THE CARIB SEA 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

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,

But they never had known the kiss of man,

Nor had looked on the peopled main,

Nor heard of the old man Atlas,

Who holds the unknown seas,

And the golden fruit that is guarded well

By the young Hesperides.

IV

steers by Castle Island Light

May hear the seamen tell

How one, the mate, alone was saved

From the wreck of the "Claribel;"

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