Classic Poem

Out of the great commercial town,
Summoned by the bark's renown,
Came the masters and merchants down,
And crowded the beach;
While with gesture and speech,
With eyes of wide wonder and looks of delight,
They declared such a sight
In the waters of Christendom never was known.

The very dragon seemed to feel
A tremor of pleasure that thrilled to the keel;
And like a lady fair and proud;
Flattered by praises breathed too loud,
The shallop withdrew — so it seemed to the crowd —
And somewhat stiffly its acknowledgment bowed.
But perchance it was only the swell
Of the waters that under her rose and fell.

And there were builders, with rule and line,
Measuring its breadth and length,
Gathering its secret of grace and strength;
While, sitting on the sand,
With accurate and dexterous hand,
An artist secured the fair design.

Singing a scrap of maniac song,
Agatha pressed through the wondering throng,
Bedecked in garlands of strange device,
As if for a heathen sacrifice:
She scattered blossoms from her hand
Around the keel where it pressed the sand,
Until it seemed to be wading through
A flowery foam of various hue,
And singing still, began to deck
The dragon's curved and haughty neck,
Slipping over the glittering head
A garland of yellow, and blue, and red;
And then withdrew a space, to admire
The beautiful collar of floral fire.

When the fisherman saw his child,
And heard her voice so strange and wild,
Over his visage scarred and tanned
The trouble spread. Then he knelt on the sand,
And hiding his face in his sunburnt hand,
He sobbed aloud, while the tears of pain
Through his fingers trickled plain,
And dropt on the thirsty ground like rain.

Along the beach his forsaken net
Lay weltering in the briny wet,
Where the scaly things in their despair
Were struggling in their tangled snare,
Flashing their silvery sides in air.
Around the shore in the sunshine bright,
Like webs of those invisible looms
Whose noiseless shuttles are plied at night
Among the briers and garden blooms,
Innumerable nets were spread
On stake and fence, and over the head
Of many a low marsh-willow, to dry —
The delight, until now, of the fisherman's eye:
For each, he thought, ere the season was o'er,
With a miraculous draught would come to shore,
And thereby enable him proudly to pay
His daughter's dower on her wedding-day.

But, alas! the wary Fates had cast
Their unseen net in the river of Life;
And all his hopes, the best and last,
Were dragged to land with a fruitless strife,
To pine on the sand without relief,
And die on the sunless shores of grief.