Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed That savèd she might be; And she thought of Christ, who stilled the waves, On the Lake of Galilee. And fast through the midnight dark and drear, Through the whistling sleet and snow, Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept Towards the reef of Norman's Woe. 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, She drifted a weary 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, 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, 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. 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, In the midnight and the snow! Christ save us all from a death like this, On the reef of Norman's Woe! --HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. THE SANDS OF DEE "O Mary, go and call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, Across the sands of Dee." The western wind was wild and dark with foam, And all alone went she. The western tide crept up along the sand, And o'er and o'er the sand, And round and round the sand, As far as eye could see. The rolling mist came down and hid the land: And never home came she. "O is it weed, or fish, or floating hair-- A tress of golden hair, A drownèd maiden's hair, Above the nets at sea?" Was never salmon yet that shone so fair Among the stakes of Dee. They row'd her in across the rolling foam The cruel crawling foam, The cruel hungry foam, To her grave beside the sea. But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home, Across the sands of Dee. --CHARLES KINGSLEY. CANADIAN BOAT SONG