204
THE RHYME OF THE ANCIENT COASTER.
A messenger from other lands,
A beacon to hope and love.
No more, in the midnight tempest,
Will she mock the mounting sea,
Strong in her oaken timbers,
And her white sail’s bravery.
She hath borne, in days departed,
Warm hearts upon her deck;
Those hearts, like her, are mouldering now,
The victims, and the wreck
Of time, whose touch erases
Each vestige of all we love;
The wanderers, home returning,
Who gazed that deck above,
And they who stood to welcome
Their loved ones on that shore,
Are gone, and the place that knew them
Shall know them never more.
**********
It was a night of terror,
In the autumn equinox,
When that gallant vessel found a grave
Upon the Peekskill rocks.
