And ever the fitful gusts between,
    A sound came from the land;
  It was the sound of the trampling surf,
    On the rocks and the hard sea-sand,

  The breakers were right beneath her bows,
    She drifted a dreary wreck,
  And a whooping billow swept the crew
    Like icicles from her deck.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

  She struck where the white and fleecy waves
    Looked soft as carded wool;
  But the cruel rocks, they gored her side
    Like the horns of an angry bull.

  Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
    With the masts went by the board;
  Like a vessel of glass, she strove and sank,
    Ho! ho! the breakers roared.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

  At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach,
    A fisherman stood aghast,
  To see the form of a maiden fair,
    Lashed close to a drifting mast.

  The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
    The salt tears in her eyes;
  And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,
    On the billows fall and rise.

  Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
    In the midnight and the snow! 
  Christ save us all from a death like this,
    On the reef of Norman’s Woe!

[Illustration]