Classic Poem

" FATHER ! what is this old rope? "
Boy! 'twas once our vessel's hope
When the billows rose in rage her decks to whelm;
In that wild September gale,
Which had rent our every sail,
With that bit of rope I lashed her helm.

Had its strands then given way,
We had been the fishes' prey,
At their banquet in the sea's deep caves;
But I never lost my grip
Of that rope which held the ship
Till the winds had made peace with the waves.

How the mariner exults,
When he feels the throbbing pulse
Of the ocean lashed to fever by the gale,
And his hand directs the course
Of his vessel, like a horse
Madly tearing over hill and over dale!

Ah! the boldest charioteer
Were beside himself with fear,
If a steed in his teeth the bit should take,
Not on solid hill or plain,
But across the slippery main,
Where the path writhes beneath him like a snake.

There be those that gather nests
Down the Orkneys' sea-girt crests,
Who are lowered by a rope like this,
And who, when their scrips are full,
Give the signal-cords a pull,
To be hoisted up out of the abyss.

Yet the boldest ne'er dissemble
How much now and then they tremble,
When they feel their lives hang on such a bight,
Though those fowlers, when they climb,
Risk but one life at a time,
While this rope held a score of us that night

But no feeble hand of man
Thus from parting kept its span,
And our vessel from the trough of the sea;
It was God who held it there,
For I breathed a breath of prayer,
Like the fishers on the lake of Galilee

When I'm summoned by the Lord,
Round my coffin let this cord
Drop me like a fowler seeking for a nest;
And another boon I crave
Is that by me, in the grave,
This old and trusty friend of mineshall rest.

Dare an unbeliever say
That on Resurrection Day,
It may not serve to raise me from the grave?
Like the fowler with his scrip,
Or our storm-imperilled ship,
Which its strands from destruction helped to save?