O mower, lean on thy bended snath,
    Look from the meadows green and low: 
  The wind of the sea is a waft of death,
    The waves are singing a song of woe! 
  By silent river, by moaning sea,
  Long and vain shall thy watching be: 
  Never again shall the sweet voice call,
  Never the white hand rise and fall!

  O Rivermouth Rocks, how sad a sight
    Ye saw in the light of breaking day! 
  Dead faces looking up cold and white
    From sand and sea-weed where they lay! 
  The mad old witch-wife wailed and wept,
  And cursed the tide as it backward crept: 
  “Crawl back, crawl back, blue water-snake! 
  Leave your dead for the hearts that break!”

  Solemn it was in that old day
    In Hampton town and its log-built church,
  Where side by side the coffins lay
    And the mourners stood in aisle and porch. 
  In the singing-seats young eyes were dim,
  The voices faltered that raised the hymn,
  And Father Dalton, grave and stern,
  Sobbed through his prayer and wept in turn.

  But his ancient colleague did not pray,
    Because of his sin at fourscore years: 
  He stood apart, with the iron-gray
    Of his strong brows knitted to hide his tears. 
  And a wretched woman, holding her breath
  In the awful presence of sin and death,
  Cowered and shrank, while her neighbors thronged
  To look on the dead her shame had wronged.

  Apart with them, like them forbid,
    Old Goody Cole looked drearily round,
  As, two by two, with their faces hid,
    The mourners walked to the burying-ground. 
  She let the staff from her clasped hands fall: 
  “Lord, forgive us! we’re sinners all!”
  And the voice of the old man answered her: 
  “Amen!” said Father Bachiler.

  So, as I sat upon Appledore
    In the calm of a closing summer day,
  And the broken lines of Hampton shore
    In purple mist of cloudland lay,
  The Rivermouth Rocks their story told;
  And waves aglow with sunset gold,
  Rising and breaking in steady chime,
  Beat the rhythm and kept the time.

  And the sunset paled, and warmed once more
    With a softer, tenderer after-glow;
  In the east was moon-rise, with boats off-shore
    And sails in the distance drifting slow. 
  The beacon glimmered from Portsmouth bar,
  The White Isle kindled its great red star;
  And life and death in my old-time lay
  Mingled in peace like the night and day!

* * * * *

The schoolmaster’s story.