Poem of the Day

Maybe it’s because I’ve been listening to pirate music, but I’m on a nautical kick at the moment…

The Bell of the Wreck
By Lydia Huntley Sigourney

Toll!—Toll!—Toll!
   Thou bell by billows swung,
And night and day thy warning lore
   Repeat with mournful tongue:
Toll for the queenly boat,
   Wrecked on yon rocky shore;
Sea-weed is in her palace halls,
   She rides the surge no more.

Toll for the master bold,
   The high-souled and the brave,
Who ruled her like a thing of life
   Amid the crested wave;
Toll for the hardy crew,
   Sons of the storm and blast,
Who long the tyrant Ocean dared—
   It vanquished them at last.

Toll for the man of God,
   Whose hallowed voice of prayer
Rose calm above the gathered groan
   Of that intense despair,—
How precious were those tones
   On the sad verge of life,
Amid the fierce and freezing storm,
   And the mountain-billows’ strife!

Toll for the lover lost
   To the gay bridal train—
Bright glows a picture on his breast,
   Beneath the unfathomed main;—
One from her casement bendeth
   Long, o’er the misty sea,—
He cometh not—pale maiden—
   His heart is cold to thee.

Toll for the absent sire,
   Who to his home drew near
To bless that glad expecting group—
   Fond wife, and children dear.
They heap the blazing hearth,
   The festal board is spread,
But a fearful guest is at the gate,—
   Room for the sheeted dead!

Toll for the loved and fair,
   The whelmed beneath the tide,
The broken harps, around whose strings
   The dull sea-monsters glide.
Mother, and nursling sweet
   Reft from the household throng,
There’s bitter weeping in the nest
   Where breathed their soul of song.

Toll for the hearts that bleed,
   ’Neath misery’s furrowed trace,
For the lone, hapless orphan, left
   The last of all his race.
Yea, with thine heaviest knell,
   From surge to echoing shore,
Toll for the living—not the dead
   Whose mortal woes are o’er.

Toll! Toll!—Toll
   O’er the breeze and billow free,
And with thy startling voice instruct
   Each rover of the sea;
Tell how o’er proudest joys
   May swift destruction sweep,
And bid him build his hopes on high,
   Lone teacher of the deep.