Exercises.—­Relate Tom’s early experience at Rugby.  Was it courageous in him to stop saying his prayers?  How did he feel over it?  What did he resolve to do?  Did he carry out his resolve?  What two lessons was he taught?

LXIX.  THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS. (190)

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, one of the greatest of American poets.  He was born in Portland, Me., in 1807.  For some years he held the professorship of Modern Languages in Bowdoin College, and later a similar professorship in Harvard College.  He died March 21th, 1882.

1.  It was the schooner Hesperus,
     That sailed the wintry sea;
   And the skipper had taken his little daughter,
     To bear him company.

2.  Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax,
     Her checks like the dawn of day,
   And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,
     That ope in the month of May.

3.  The skipper, he stood beside the helm,
     His pipe was in his mouth,
   And he watched how the veering flaw did blow
     The smoke now west, now south.

4.  Then up and spake an old sailor,
     Had sailed to the Spanish Main,
   “I pray thee, put into yonder port,
     For I fear the hurricane.

5.  “Last night, the moon had a golden ring,
     And to-night no moon we see!”
   The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe,
     And a scornful laugh laughed he.

6.  Colder and louder blew the wind,
     A gale from the northeast;
   The snow fell hissing in the brine,
     And the billows frothed like yeast.

7.  Down came the storm, and smote amain
     The vessel in its strength;
   She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,
     Then leaped her cable’s length.

8.  “Come hither! come hither! my little daughter,
     And do not tremble so;
   For I can weather the roughest gale
     That ever wind did blow.”

9.  He wrapped her warm in his seaman’s coat,
     Against the stinging blast: 
   He cut a rope from a broken spar,
     And bound her to the mast.

10.  “O father!  I hear the church bells ring,
      Oh say, what may it be?”
    “’Tis a fog bell on a rock-bound coast!”
      And he steered for the open sea.

11.  “O father!  I hear the sound of guns,
      Oh say, what may it be?”
    “Some ship in distress, that can not live
      In such an angry sea!”

12.  “O father!  I see a gleaming light,
      Oh say, what may it be?”
    But the father answered never a word,
      A frozen corpse was he.

13.  Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
      With his face turned to the skies,
    The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow
      On his fixed and glassy eyes.

14.  Then the maiden clasped her hands, and prayed
      That saved she might be;
    And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave
      On the lake of Galilee.