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THE COAST-GUARD'S STORY.
103
Singing away the darkness,
Unto the dawning white,
When the sea-gulls came screaming" A- i-e. Tisday!"
Bats shivered "Woe for night !"
Out of the waning darkness,
Driven before the sun,
A ship came drifting, and drifting fast,
A ship with never a sail nor mast,
All of its voyage done.
The coast-guard waited with hands fast clenched,
Visage a purple white,
" Something is here that I needs must fear,
After my dream last night."
The ship came closer, the skeleton ship —
Tangle of shattered ropes,
Fragments of scattered hopes,
Did round its timbers cling ;
Among the shrouds, in a hammock of wreck,
A dead man's form did swing.
