[Illustration:  The Wreck of the Hesperus]

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

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

  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.

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

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  “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.

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

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  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.

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

  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.

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

  “O father!  I hear the sound of guns;
    O say, what may it be?”—­
  “Some ship in distress, that cannot live
    In such an angry sea!”

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

  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.

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  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.

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  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.