The Whistling Buoy Off Nauset
Voice of unutterable woe
Wailing alone at sea!
Borne on the shuddering winds that blow
Out of the dark to me.
Now far - now near
To the frightened ear
Comes that monody wild and free.
Mingled of menace and grief and fear
With a maniac chuckle of glee -
O hear!
That note of demoniac glee!
Prophet of peril and storm,
Harbinger, Triton and brute,
Mariners peering to glimpse your form
Cheer at your hoarse salute -
That gurgling sound
Of a sob half drowned
That is vague as the muttering foam!
Staggering drunkenly to and fro,
You buffet the tide rips and undertow,
A fettered gnome
In the grip of the shoals below.
Hark to that ominous roar
Freezing the blood with dread!
Vampire waves on a spectral shore
Ravening over the dead.
O-oo, O-oo!
Is your wild adieu
To the souls that the winds have sped!
Breakers are howling like wolves on the trail,
Foaming and gnashing and leaping the rail,
Where a shrieking crew
Are lost in the maddened gale.
Wraith of the dangerous seas,
Haunting the skeleton sands,
Creature of iron and billow and breeze
Wrought by a mortal’s hands.
Your eerie moan
So weird - so lone
Is a medley of boding and rapture and groan.
Roisterer, mourner and demon I wis
Strangest of beings in ocean’s abyss
Your elfin cry
Is a note of its infinite mystery.