Classic Poem

The night is stormy and dark,
And the gale is piping free;
The boding moon went out too soon,
Over the murky lee;
The mad sea moans, the tempest groans,
And I rise from a haunted sleep,
With the wild unrest of a soul distrest,
For my darling is on the deep!

My lamp went out by itself,
Ere the midnight bell had beat;
The spaniel whined to the moaning wind,
And crouched in fear at my feet;
And as the blast flew shrieking past,
A voice seemed borne to me —
I thought it was my Willie dear,
A-sinking in the sea!

For the maiden moon she died too soon
From out the lurid lee;
She hid her face in a veil of cloud,
From something she would not see!
Red-ringed and ashen-pale she was,
Like the spectral Lapland sun;
She troubled my dreams with her fateful beams,
And I would that the night were done!

For all on a swift and angry flood,
I saw a fearful sight —
The wave-washed deck of a staggering wreck,
That drave athwart the night;
And red from its scabbard of cloud,
The rapier-lightning leapt,
The masts they cracked, and a cataract
Of waves o'er the vessel swept!

Oh, wild was the cry which the roaring blasts
Bore far o'er the midnight main,
For black with wrath on his ocean-path,
Death rode the hurricane!
And my soul recoiled aghast,
Till the vision passed away;
And all in tears from a couch of fears,
I woke to weep and pray!

O for the sound of a step I know,
And a voice that is dear to me!
But 'tis only the wind in the rattling blind,
Or an owl in the blasted tree!
Oh, God! is it never to cease —
The horror that mocks my grief —
The shuddering crash of the breakers that dash
Over the roaring reef?

Wearily clangs the clock that counts
The sad, slow steps of night,
And weary the last, long hour that brings
A glimmer of mournful light;
Till wrapt in a ragged shroud of fog,
The light-house looms like a ghost;
And bald and gray, the early day
Breaks on the dismal coast.

Cometh the dawn with a dull, dead gleam,
For the crest of the blue cold wave,
And a cry of delight for the little beach bird,
But nothing for hope but a grave!
For there is that, nor penitent waves,
Nor weeping mists can hide —
The nameless thing that drifts and dips
With the swing of the heaving tide!