And ever the fitful gusts between, A sound came from the land; It was the sound of the trampling surf, On the rocks and the hard sea-sand. The breakers were right beneath her bows, 65 She drifted a dreary wreck, And a whooping billow swept the crew Like icicles from her deck. She struck where the white and fleecy waves Looked soft as carded wool, 70 But the cruel rocks, they gored her side Like the horns of an angry bull. Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice, With the masts went by the board; Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank, 75 Ho! ho! the breakers roared! At daybreak on the bleak sea-beach, A fisherman stood aghast, To see the form of a maiden fair, Lashed close to a drifting mast. 80 The salt-sea was frozen on her breast, The salt tears in her eyes; And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed, On the billows fall and rise. Such was the wreck of the Hesperus, 85 In the midnight and the snow! Christ save us all from a death like this, On the reef of Norman's Woe! PAUL REVERE'S RIDE Listen, my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,[308] On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year. 5 He said to his friend, "If the British march By land or sea from the town to-night, Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch Of the North Church[309] tower as a signal light,-- One, if by land, and two, if by sea; 10 And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm, For the country-folk to be up and arm." Then he said, "Good night!" and with muffled oar 15 Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore, Just as the moon rose over the bay, Where swinging wide at her moorings lay The Somerset, British man-of-war; A phantom ship, with each mast and spar 20 Across the moon like a prison bar And a huge black hulk, that was magnified By its own reflection in the tide. Meanwhile his friend, through alley and street, Wanders and watches with eager ears, 25 Till in the silence around him he hears The muster of men at the barrack door, The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet, And the measured tread of the grenadiers, Marching down to their boats on the shore. 30