| |
| ’TWAS 1 when the seas were roaring | |
| With hollow blasts of wind; | |
| A damsel lay deploring, | |
| All on a rock reclin’d. | |
| Wide o’er the rolling billows | 5 |
| She cast a wistful look; | |
| Her head was crowned with willows | |
| That tremble o’er the brook. | |
| |
| Twelve months are gone and over, | |
| And nine long tedious days: | 10 |
| Why didst thou, vent’rous lover, | |
| Why didst thou trust the seas? | |
| Cease, cease, thou cruel ocean, | |
| And let my lover rest: | |
| Ah! what’s thy troubled motion | 15 |
| To that within my breast? | |
| |
| The merchant, robbed of pleasure, | |
| Sees tempests in despair; | |
| But what’s the loss of treasure | |
| To losing of my dear? | 20 |
| Should you some coast be laid on | |
| Where gold and di’monds grow, | |
| You’d find a richer maiden, | |
| But none that loves you so. | |
| |
| How can they say that Nature | 25 |
| Has nothing made in vain? | |
| Why then beneath the water | |
| Should hideous rocks remain? | |
| No eyes the rocks discover | |
| That lurk beneath the deep, | 30 |
| To wreck the wand’ring lover, | |
| And leave the maid to weep. | |
| |
| All melancholy lying, | |
| Thus wailed she for her dear; | |
| Repaid each blast with sighing, | 35 |
| Each billow with a tear; | |
| When o’er the white wave stooping, | |
| His floating corpse she spied; | |
| Then, like a lily drooping, | |
| She bow’d her head and died. | 40 |
