From world to world His couriers fly, Thought-winged and shod with fire; The angel of His stormy sky Rides down the sunken wire.
What saith the herald of the Lord?
"The world's long strife is done; Close wedded by that mystic cord, Its continents are one.
"And one in heart, as one in blood, Shall all her peoples be; The hands of human brotherhood Are clasped beneath the sea.
"Through Orient seas, o'er Afric's plain And Asian mountains borne, The vigor of the Northern brain Shall nerve the world outworn.
"From clime to clime, from shore to shore, Shall thrill the magic thread; The new Prometheus steals once more The fire that wakes the dead."
Throb on, strong pulse of thunder! beat From answering beach to beach; Fuse nations in thy kindly heat, And melt the chains of each!
Wild terror of the sky above, Glide tamed and dumb below!
Bear gently, Ocean's carrier-dove, Thy errands to and fro.
Weave on, swift shuttle of the Lord, Beneath the deep so far, The bridal robe of earth's accord, The funeral shroud of war!
For lo! the fall of Ocean's wall Space mocked and time outrun; And round the world the thought of all Is as the thought of one!
The poles unite, the zones agree, The tongues of striving cease; As on the Sea of Galilee The Christ is whispering, Peace!
1858.
"Glad prophecy! to this at last,"
The Reader said, "shall all things come.
Forgotten be the bugle's blast, And battle-music of the drum.
"A little while the world may run Its old mad way, with needle-gun And iron-clad, but truth, at last, shall reign The cradle-song of Christ was never sung in vain!"
Shifting his scattered papers, "Here,"
He said, as died the faint applause, "Is something that I found last year Down on the island known as Orr's.
I had it from a fair-haired girl Who, oddly, bore the name of Pearl, (As if by some droll freak of circumstance,) Classic, or wellnigh so, in Harriet Stowe's romance."
THE DEAD SHIP OF HARPSWELL.
What flecks the outer gray beyond The sundown's golden trail?
The white flash of a sea-bird's wing, Or gleam of slanting sail?
Let young eyes watch from Neck and Point, And sea-worn elders pray,-- The ghost of what was once a ship Is sailing up the bay.
From gray sea-fog, from icy drift, From peril and from pain, The home-bound fisher greets thy lights, O hundred-harbored Maine!
But many a keel shall seaward turn, And many a sail outstand, When, tall and white, the Dead Ship looms Against the dusk of land.
She rounds the headland's bristling pines; She threads the isle-set bay; No spur of breeze can speed her on, Nor ebb of tide delay.
Old men still walk the Isle of Orr Who tell her date and name, Old shipwrights sit in Freeport yards Who hewed her oaken frame.
What weary doom of baffled quest, Thou sad sea-ghost, is thine?
What makes thee in the haunts of home A wonder and a sign?
No foot is on thy silent deck, Upon thy helm no hand; No ripple hath the soundless wind That smites thee from the land!
For never comes the ship to port, Howe'er the breeze may be; Just when she nears the waiting shore She drifts again to sea.
No tack of sail, nor turn of helm, Nor sheer of veering side; Stern-fore she drives to sea and night, Against the wind and tide.
In vain o'er Harpswell Neck the star Of evening guides her in; In vain for her the lamps are lit Within thy tower, Seguin!
In vain the harbor-boat shall hail, In vain the pilot call; No hand shall reef her spectral sail, Or let her anchor fall.
Shake, brown old wives, with dreary joy, Your gray-head hints of ill; And, over sick-beds whispering low, Your prophecies fulfil.
Some home amid yon birchen trees Shall drape its door with woe; And slowly where the Dead Ship sails, The burial boat shall row!
From Wolf Neck and from Flying Point, From island and from main, From sheltered cove and tided creek, Shall glide the funeral train.
The dead-boat with the bearers four, The mourners at her stern,-- And one shall go the silent way Who shall no more return!
And men shall sigh, and women weep, Whose dear ones pale and pine, And sadly over sunset seas Await the ghostly sign.
They know not that its sails are filled By pity's tender breath, Nor see the Angel at the helm Who steers the Ship of Death!
1866.
"Chill as a down-east breeze should be,"
The Book-man said. "A ghostly touch The legend has. I'm glad to see Your flying Yankee beat the Dutch."
"Well, here is something of the sort Which one midsummer day I caught In Narragansett Bay, for lack of fish."
"We wait," the Traveller said; "serve hot or cold your dish."
THE PALATINE.
Block Island in Long Island Sound, called by the Indians Manisees, the isle of the little god, was the scene of a tragic incident a hundred years or more ago, when _The Palatine_, an emigrant ship bound for Philadelphia, driven off its course, came upon the coast at this point.
A mutiny on board, followed by an inhuman desertion on the part of the crew, had brought the unhappy passengers to the verge of starvation and madness. Tradition says that wreckers on shore, after rescuing all but one of the survivors, set fire to the vessel, which was driven out to sea before a gale which had sprung up. Every twelvemonth, according to the same tradition, the spectacle of a ship on fire is visible to the inhabitants of the island.
Leagues north, as fly the gull and auk, Point Judith watches with eye of hawk; Leagues south, thy beacon flames, Montauk!
Lonely and wind-shorn, wood-forsaken, With never a tree for Spring to waken, For tryst of lovers or farewells taken,
Circled by waters that never freeze, Beaten by billow and swept by breeze, Lieth the island of Manisees,
Set at the mouth of the Sound to hold The coast lights up on its turret old, Yellow with moss and sea-fog mould.
Dreary the land when gust and sleet At its doors and windows howl and beat, And Winter laughs at its fires of peat!
But in summer time, when pool and pond, Held in the laps of valleys fond, Are blue as the glimpses of sea beyond;
When the hills are sweet with the brier-rose, And, hid in the warm, soft dells, unclose Flowers the mainland rarely knows;