_Men who bless them
And caress them--
Bells that call upon the land--
Curse and chide them,
Mock, deride them,
When they shout above a sand.
Not alone are bells thus treated,
For the story is repeated
In the world of every day;
He who flings us--
He who brings us--
Joys and pleasures all may share,
Has our blessings for his pay;
But he who warns us--
He who mourns us,
Bids us to the watch and ware--
Has our curses,
And reverses
In the moulds that mint our prayer._
O singer of the sailor's song,
Fear not to sing me broad and strong--
Fear not to sing me in the van
Of those who stand and strive for man;
And if they make the question, then
Come tell me what man does for men.
I am the Belfry of the Sea,
The rider of the swell,
The guardsman of the deadly lee,
The outer sentinel.
Man placed me here to watch this sand--
This sneaking, shifting shoal--
He shaped me with a clever hand,
So that my bell doth toll
With every move and motion
Of the changeful, changeless ocean.
Mine is a thankless task;
But no recompense I ask.
I am hated by the shoal;
I am hated by the sea;
And the very fish that bask
In the shadow of my cask
Are half afraid of me.
The land wind speaks me fair,
For it has no thought or care
With the deeds that are done
In the midnight and the gale;
And it bears me on its wing
A welcome offering
Of the shouting of the upland
And the chatter of the shale.
But most I love the weather
When the wind and sea together
Lie locked in summer slumber
And the sky sleeps overhead,
For then I ease the strain
On my anchor and my chain,
And ring a muffled service
For my shattered, scattered dead.
I am never wholly sad;
I am never wholly glad;
For my sadness is half madness
And my gladness is half sadness
For the remnants of the wrecks
That lie below me cast
A gloom upon the wave,
And my sunny days are past
Sleeping in the shadow
That is shaken from a grave.
'Twas not I who betrayed them;
'Twas not I who waylaid them;
But they died with curses for me
On their water-wasted lips.
I did my best to save them
The warning that I gave them
Is the warning that has succored
Ten thousand watchful ships.
Ah, had they used the lead!
Ah, had they tacked instead
Of standing blindly onward
Without a watch for me!
They would have heard me tolling;
They would have seen me rolling;
And have had a chance to weather
And gain the open sea.
For I mark a dreaded danger
To the coaster and the stranger,
For my friend below is silent
And shows no foamy chain.
Not like the sunken ledge;
Not like the reefs that wedge
The surges from the undergrip
And hurl them out again.
For the reef it warns the ship
By the frothing and the snowing
Of its rocky underlip;
For it shows its broken teeth,
And it bares the bone beneath,
And roars sometimes in anger,
And it cries sometimes in grief.
But this sluggish and this sucking spread of sand
It is dead to ear and eye;
And its very bounds defy
The laws that keep in order
The stout and stable land.
It changes every storm;
And I never know its form--
I who gird and guard it
With my constant clanging bell--
It scarcely gives me hold
For my anchor in its mold;
And we shift and change together
With each mighty, moving swell.
But I rob it of its prey,
For the ships have time to stay,
When the wind takes up my music
And bears it out to sea;
But when the Easters roar
And drive upon the shore
My loudest cry of warning
Is tossed and lost a-lee.
Then, then I cry in anger,
And the clanging and the clangor
Shake and shock the bars
Of my tossing, toiling cage;
And I curse the wind and sea,
And the chain that's under me
Strains its links and surges
With the transports of my rage.
For I know I cannot save them;
And the shoal that thinks to grave them--
That will feed its thousand acres
On their oaken frames and sides--
It seems to mound its spread,
It seems to lift its head,
As though to make more deadly
The tangle of its tides.
In the snow, in the fog,
When the sharpest eyes are blind;
When the ocean
Has scarce motion,
And the wind
Has forsaken;
When my power of speech is taken,
And I sit in silent pain;
When I toil and toil in vain
To force the larum note
From the muscles of my throat,
And it only breathes a toll
That dies upon the shoal;
And I strive and I writhe
With the pain of action palsied
By a force beyond control.
When I cannot see or hear them;
When I cannot warn or cheer them;
And only know that they are there
By the throbbing of my soul.
For I know that they will blame me;
For I know that they will name me
With the bitterest of curses
For the silence of my note,
And I stoop and pray the sea
To lend its aid to me;
But it mocks me with a ripple
That scarcely wets my float.
And then I hear them calling,
As slowly, slowly crawling
They come working in from seaward
With their whistles crying _where_?
And I try to answer back
That I'm lying in the track;
But the loudest cry I make them
Is a thread upon the air.
_Swing--swing--
Ring--ring--
Roll--roll--
Toll--toll--
Just a thing
Without a soul,
Doing its duty on the shoal;
Just a bell
That sea and swell
In their fury, in their play,
Set a throbbing,
And a sobbing;
By their very madness robbing--
By their rage and rush defeating,
By their hate and hurry cheating--
Ocean of its prey.
Swing--swing--
Ring--ring--
Roll--roll--
Toll--toll._