‘Twas a day of storm, for the giant Atlantic, rolling in pride,
Drawn by the full moon, driven by the fierce wind, tide upon tide.
Flooded our poor little Channel. A hundred anxious eyes
Were watching a breach new broken—when suddenly some one cries,
“A boat coming in!”—and, rounding the pierhead that hid her before.
There, sure enough, was a stranger smack, head straight for the
shore.
How will she land, where each wave is a mountain? Too late for
_how_!
Run up a flag there to show her the right place! She _must_ land
now!
She is close—with a rush on the galloping wavetop—a stand,
As the water sinks from beneath her—her nose just touches the land.
And then (as rude hands, sacking a city, greedy of prey,
Toss, in some littered chamber, a child’s toy lightly away),
A great wave rose from behind, and lifting her, towered, and broke,
And flung her headlong, down on the hard beach, close to the folk.
Crash!... But ’tis only her bowsprit gone—she is saved somehow
And a cheer broke out, for a hundred hands have hold of her now.
And they say ’twas her bowsprit saved her, or she must have gone
over then;
Her bowsprit it was that saved her; and little they think, those
men,
Of one weak woman that prayed, as she watched them tempest-driven!
They say ’twas her bowsprit saved her! I say, ’twas that prayer,
and Heaven!
—_The Spectator._