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(From The Musician’s Tale)
AT Stralsund, by the Baltic Sea, | |
| Within the sandy bar, | |
| At sunset of a summer’s day, | |
| Ready for sea, at anchor lay | |
| The good ship Valdemar. | 5 |
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| The sunbeams danced upon the waves, | |
| And played along her side; | |
| And through the cabin windows streamed | |
| In ripples of golden light, that seemed | |
| The ripple of the tide. | 10 |
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| There sat the captain with his friends, | |
| Old skippers brown and hale, | |
| Who smoked and grumbled o’er their grog, | |
| And talked of iceberg and of fog, | |
| Of calm and storm and gale. * * * * * | 15 |
| The cabin windows have grown blank | |
| As eyeballs of the dead; | |
| No more the glancing sunbeams burn | |
| On the gilt letters of the stern, | |
| But on the figure-head; | 20 |
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| On Valdemar victorious, | |
| Who looketh with disdain | |
| To see his image in the tide | |
| Dismembered float from side to side, | |
| And reunite again. | 25 |
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| “It is the wind,” those skippers said, | |
| “That swings the vessel so; | |
| It is the wind; it freshens fast, | |
| ’T is time to say farewell at last, | |
| ’T is time for us to go.” | 30 |
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| They shook the captain by the hand, | |
| “Good luck! good luck!” they cried; | |
| Each face was like the setting sun, | |
| As, broad and red, they one by one | |
| Went o’er the vessel’s side. | 35 |
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| The sun went down, the full moon rose, | |
| Serene o’er field and flood; | |
| And all the winding creeks and bays | |
| And broad sea-meadows seemed ablaze, | |
| The sky was red as blood. | 40 |
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| The southwest wind blew fresh and fair, | |
| As fair as wind could be; | |
| Bound for Odessa, o’er the bar, | |
| With all sail set, the Valdemar | |
| Went proudly out to sea. | 45 |
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| The lovely moon climbs up the sky | |
| As one who walks in dreams; | |
| A tower of marble in her light, | |
| A wall of black, a wall of white, | |
| The stately vessel seems. | 50 |
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| Low down upon the sandy coast | |
| The lights begin to burn; | |
| And now, uplifted high in air, | |
| They kindle with a fiercer glare, | |
| And now drop far astern. | 55 |
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| The dawn appears, the land is gone, | |
| The sea is all around; | |
| Then on each hand low hills of sand | |
| Emerge and form another land; | |
| She steereth through the Sound. | 60 |
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