In Young’s Chronicles of Massachusetts Bay front
1623 to 1636 may be found Anthony Thacher’s
Narrative of his Shipwreck. Thacher was Avery’s
companion and survived to tell the tale. Mather’s
Magnalia, III. 2, gives further Particulars of Parson
Avery’s End, and suggests the title of the poem.
When the reaper’s task was ended, and the
summer wearing late, Parson Avery sailed from Newbury,
with his wife and children eight, Dropping down the
river-harbor in the shallop “Watch and Wait.”
Pleasantly lay the clearings in the mellow summer-morn,
With the newly planted orchards dropping their fruits
first-born, And the home-roofs like brown islands
amid a sea of corn.
Broad meadows reached out ’seaward the tided
creeks between, And hills rolled wave-like inland,
with oaks and walnuts green;— A fairer
home, a—goodlier land, his eyes had never
seen.
Yet away sailed Parson Avery, away where duty led,
And the voice of God seemed calling, to break the
living bread To the souls of fishers starving on the
rocks of Marblehead.
All day they sailed: at nightfall the pleasant
land-breeze died, The blackening sky, at midnight,
its starry lights denied, And far and low the thunder
of tempest prophesied.
Blotted out were all the coast-lines, gone were rock,
and wood, and sand; Grimly anxious stood the skipper
with the rudder in his hand, And questioned of the
darkness what was sea and what was land.
And the preacher heard his dear ones, nestled round
him, weeping sore, “Never heed, my little children!
Christ is walking on before; To the pleasant land
of heaven, where the sea shall be no more.”
All at once the great cloud parted, like a curtain
drawn aside, To let down the torch of lightning on
the terror far and wide; And the thunder and the
whirlwind together smote the tide.
There was wailing in the shallop, woman’s wail
and man’s despair, A crash of breaking timbers
on the rocks so sharp and bare, And, through it all,
the murmur of Father Avery’s prayer.
From his struggle in the darkness with the wild waves
and the blast, On a rock, where every billow broke
above him as it passed, Alone, of all his household,
the man of God was cast.
There a comrade heard him praying, in the pause of
wave and wind “All my own have gone before me,
and I linger just behind; Not for life I ask, but
only for the rest Thy ransomed find!
“In this night of death I challenge the promise
of Thy word!— Let me see the great salvation
of which mine ears have heard!— Let me
pass from hence forgiven, through the grace of Christ,
our Lord!
“In the baptism of these waters wash white my
every sin, And let me follow up to Thee my household
and my kin! Open the sea-gate of Thy heaven,
and let me enter in!”
When the Christian sings his death-song, all the
listening heavens draw near, And the angels, leaning
over the walls of crystal, hear How the notes so
faint and broken swell to music in God’s ear.
