"O father! I see a gleaming light, O say, what may it be?" But the father answered never a word, A frozen corpse was he. Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark, With his face to the skies, The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow On his fixed and glassy eyes. Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed That saved she might be; And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave, On the Lake of Galilee. And fast through the midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept Towards the reef of Norman's Woe, THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS. 191 And ever the fitful gusts between A sound came from the land; It was the sound of the trampling surf, The breakers were right beneath her bows, And a whooping billow swept the crew She struck where the white and fleecy waves But the cruel rocks, they gored her side Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice, With the masts went by the board; Like a vessel of glass, she strove and sank Ho! Ho! the breakers roared! At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach. To see the form of a maiden fair, Lashed close to a drifting mast. The salt sea was frozen on her breast, And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed Such was the wreck of the Hesperus, On the reef of Norman's Woe! THE LUCK OF EDENHALL FROM THE GERMAN OF UHLAND. [The tradition, upon which this ballad is founded, and the "shards of the Luck of Edenhall," still exist in England. The goblet is in the possession of Sir Chris topher Musgrave, Bart., of Eden Hall, Cumberland; and is not so entirely shattered, as the ballad leaves it.] OF Edenhall, the youthful Lord And cries, 'mid the drunken revelers all Now bring me the Luck of Edenhall!" The butler hears the words with pain, Takes slow from its silken cloth again Then said the Lord; "This glass to praise. It beams from the Luck of Edenhall. Then speaks the Lord, and waves it light "T was right a goblet the Fate should be Of the joyous race of Edenhall! |