111. Mr. Merry's Lament for "Long Tom" by John Gardiner Calkins Brainard. Stedman, Edmund Clarence, ed. 1900. An American Anthology, 1787-1900

Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.

111. Mr. Merry’s Lament for “Long Tom”

By John Gardiner Calkins Brainard


THY cruise is over now,
Thou art anchored by the shore,
And never more shalt thou
Hear the storm around thee roar;
Death has shaken out the sands of thy glass.	5
Now around thee sports the whale,
And the porpoise snuffs the gale,
And the night-winds wake their wail,
As they pass.

The sea-grass round thy bier	10
Shall bend beneath the tide,
Nor tell the breakers near
Where thy manly limbs abide;
But the granite rock thy tombstone shall be.
Though the edges of thy grave	15
Are the combings of the wave—
Yet unheeded they shall rave
Over thee.

At the piping of all hands,
When the judgment signal’s spread—	20
When the islands, and the lands,
And the seas give up their dead,
And the south and the north shall come;
When the sinner is dismayed,
And the just man is afraid,	25
Then heaven be thy aid,
Poor Tom.