In Mather's Magnalia Christi,
Of the old colonial time,
May be found in prose the legend
That is here set down in rhyme.
A ship sailed from New Haven,
And the keen and the frosty airs,
That filled her sails at parting,
Were heavy with good men's prayers.
"O Lord, if it be thy pleasure"--
Thus prayed the old divine--
"To bury our friends in the ocean,
Take them, for they are thine."
But Master Lamberton muttered,
And under his breath said he,
"This ship is so crank and walty,
I fear our grave she will be!"
And the ships that came from England,
When the winter months were gone,
Brought no tidings of this vessel
Nor of Master Lamberton.
This put the people to praying
That the Lord would let them hear
What in his greater wisdom
He had done with their friends so dear.
And at last their prayers were answered:
It was in the month of June,
An hour before the sunset
Of a windy afternoon.
When steadily steering landward,
A ship was seen below,
And they knew it was Lamberton, Master,
Who sailed so long ago.
On she came with a cloud of canvas,
Right against the wind that blew,
Until the eye could distinguish
The faces of the crew.
Then fell her straining topmasts,
Hanging tangled in the shrouds.
And her sails were loosened and lifted,
And blown away like clouds.
And the masts, with all their rigging,
Fell slowly, one by one,
And the hulk dilated and vanished,
As a sea-mist in the sun!
And the people who saw this marvel
Each said unto his friend,
That this was the mould of the vessel,
And thus her tragic end.
And the pastor of the village
Gave thanks to God in prayer,
That, to quiet their troubled spirits,
He had sent this ship of air.
THE PHANTOM LIGHT OF THE BAIE DES
CHALEURS: ARTHUR WENTWORTH HAMILTON EATON
'Tis the laughter of pines that swing and sway
Where the breeze from the land meets the breeze from the bay,
'Tis the silvery foam of the silver tide
In ripples that reach to the forest side;
'Tis the fisherman's boat, in the track of sheen,
Plying through tangled seaweed green,
O'er the Baie des Chaleurs.
Who has not heard of the phantom light
That over the moaning waves at night
Dances and drifts in endless play,
Close to the shore, then far away,
Fierce as the flame in sunset skies,
Cold as the winter light that lies
On the Baie des Chaleurs.
They tell us that many a year ago,
From lands where the palm and olive grow,
Where vines with their purple clusters creep
Over the hillsides gray and steep,
A knight in his doublet, slashed with gold,
Famed in that chivalrous time of old,
For valorous deeds and courage rare,
Sailed with a princess wondrous fair
To the Baie des Chaleurs.
That a pirate crew from some isle of the sea,
A murderous band as e'er could be,
With a shadowy sail, and a flag of night,
That flaunted and flew in heaven's sight,
Swept in the wake of the lovers there,
And sank the ship and its freight so fair
In the Baie des Chaleurs.
Strange is the tale that the fishermen tell,--
They say that a ball of fire fell
Straight from the sky, with crash and roar,
Lighting the bay from shore to shore;
That the ship with a shudder and a groan,
Sank through the waves to the caverns lone
Of the Baie des Chaleurs.
That was the last of the pirate crew,
But many a night a black flag flew
From the mast of a spectre vessel, sailed
By a spectre band that wept and wailed,
For the wreck they had wrought on the sea and the land,
For the innocent blood they had spilt on the sand,
Of the Baie des Chaleurs.
This is the tale of the phantom light,
That fills the mariner's heart at night,
With dread as it gleams o'er his path on the bay,
Now by the shore, then far away,
Fierce as the flame in sunset skies,
Cold as the winter moon that lies
On the Baie des Chaleurs.