In Hampton meadows, where mowers laid
    Their scythes to the swaths of salted grass,
  “Ah, well-a-day! our hay must be made!”
    A young man sighed, who saw them pass. 
  Loud laughed his fellows to see him stand
  Whetting his scythe with a listless hand,
  Hearing a voice in a far-off song,
  Watching a white hand beckoning long.

  “Fie on the witch!” cried a merry girl,
    As they rounded the point where Goody Cole
  Sat by her door with her wheel atwirl,
    A bent and blear-eyed poor old soul. 
  “Oho!” she muttered, “ye’re brave to-day! 
  But I hear the little waves laugh and say,
  ’The broth will be cold that waits at home;
  For it’s one to go, but another to come!’”

  “She’s curst,” said the skipper; “speak her fair: 
    I’m scary always to see her shake
  Her wicked head, with its wild gray hair,
    And nose like a hawk, and eyes like a snake.” 
  But merrily still, with laugh and shout,
  From Hampton river the boat sailed out,
  Till the huts and the flakes on Star seemed nigh,
  And they lost the scent of the pines of Rye.

  They dropped their lines in the lazy tide,
    Drawing up haddock and mottled cod;
  They saw not the Shadow that walked beside,
    They heard not the feet with silence shod. 
  But thicker and thicker a hot mist grew,
  Shot by the lightnings through and through;
  And muffled growls, like the growl of a beast,
  Ran along the sky from west to east.

  Then the skipper looked from the darkening sea
    Up to the dimmed and wading sun,
  But he spake like a brave man cheerily,
    “Yet there is time for our homeward run.” 
  Veering and tacking, they backward wore;
  And just as a breath from the woods ashore
  Blew out to whisper of danger past,
  The wrath of the storm came down at last!

  The skipper hauled at the heavy sail: 
    “God be our help!” he only cried,
  As the roaring gale, like the stroke of a flail,
    Smote the boat on its starboard side. 
  The Shoalsmen looked, but saw alone
  Dark films of rain-cloud slantwise blown,
  Wild rocks lit up by the lightning’s glare,
  The strife and torment of sea and air.

  Goody Cole looked out from her door: 
    The Isles of Shoals were drowned and gone,
  Scarcely she saw the Head of the Boar
    Toss the foam from tusks of stone. 
  She clasped her hands with a grip of pain,
  The tear on her cheek was not of rain: 
  “They are lost,” she muttered, “boat and crew! 
  Lord, forgive me! my words were true!”

  Suddenly seaward swept the squall;
   The low sun smote through cloudy rack;
  The Shoals stood clear in the light, and all
    The trend of the coast lay hard and black. 
  But far and wide as eye could reach,
  No life was seen upon wave or beach;
  The boat that went out at morning never
  Sailed back again into Hampton river.