| |
| TWO hundred miles to the south-southeast | |
| On George’s the billows foam like yeast. | |
| O’er shallow banks, where on every side | |
| Lies peril of billow, shoal, and tide. | |
| There, riding like sea-gulls with wings at rest, | 5 |
| Cape Ann’s swift schooners the sharp seas breast, | |
| With their straining cables reaching down | |
| Where the anchors clutch at the sea-sands brown. | |
| |
| There gather when shorten the wintry days | |
| The fish of a thousand shallow bays. | 10 |
| There men of a score of races reap | |
| Their dear-bought harvest, while billows sweep, | |
| And drear fogs gather, and tempests blow | |
| O’er the fatal sands which shift below | |
| The ever-angry sea, which laves | 15 |
| A thousand wrecks and a myriad graves. | |
| |
| Yet merrily still they fish, nor reck | |
| Of the piercing cold or the wave-swept deck; | |
| And the warning fog-horn, the bell’s sad tone, | |
| Wakens no thought of knell or moan | 20 |
| In those sturdy fishermen, brave and free, | |
| As they mournfully challenge the fog-veiled sea, | |
| Though there scarce is one but has shed a tear | |
| For comrade or friend who has perished there. | |
| As the veteran leaps to the battle-torn rank, | 25 |
| As the frigate steams in where her consort sank, | |
| So when maidens are weeping, and widows are pale, | |
| New vessels are manned for those lost in the gale. | |
| The orphan fears not the restless wave | |
| Which gave him food, and his sire a grave; | 30 |
| And the soulless veteran soundly sleeps, | |
| Rocked by the rough sea which sullenly sweeps | |
| O’er the bones of comrade, brother, and son, | |
| Whose long, hard, perilous task is done. | |
| |
| If the coveted water, by David outpoured | 35 |
| As an offering purchased with blood, to the Lord, | |
| Was too rare for a king, truly precious must be | |
| The coarse fare these wring from the pitiless sea. | |
| Unnoted, the fishermen live and die | |
| Mid the ravening waves, while the pitiless sky | 40 |
| Shuts out e’en man’s pitying glance. As yet | |
| No squadron in war’s fiercest tempest has met | |
| Such remediless loss, and such utter defeat | |
| As the men who ship in the “George’s Fleet.” | |
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