WRITTEN
Reading edition
ON PASSING DEADMAN'S ISLAND, IN THE GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE,[1] LATE IN THE EVENING, SEPTEMBER, 1804.
See you, beneath yon cloud so dark, Fast gliding along a gloomy bark? Her sails are full,—though the wind is still, And there blows not a breath her sails to fill!
Say, what doth that vessel of darkness bear? The silent calm of the grave is there, Save now and again a death-knell rung, And the flap of the sails with night-fog hung.
There lieth a wreck on the dismal shore Of cold and pitiless Labrador; Where, under the moon, upon mounts of frost, Full many a mariner's bones are tost.
Yon shadowy bark hath been to that wreck, And the dim blue fire, that lights her deck, Doth play on as pale and livid a crew, As ever yet drank the churchyard dew.
To Deadman's Isle, in the eye of the blast, To Deadman's Isle, she speeds her fast; By skeleton shapes her sails are furled, And the hand that steers is not of this world!
Oh! hurry thee on-oh! hurry thee on, Thou terrible bark, ere the night be gone, Nor let morning look on so foul a sight As would blanch for ever her rosy light!
[1] This is one of the Magdalen Islands, and, singularly enough, is the property of Sir Isaac Coffin. The above lines were suggested by a superstition very common among sailors, who called this ghost-ship, I think, "The Flying Dutchman."