[The following Ballad was suggested to me while riding on the seashore
at Newport. A year or two previous a skeleton had been dug up at Fall
River, clad in broken and corroded armor; and the idea occurred to me of
connecting it with the Round Tower at Newport, generally known hitherto
as the Old Wind-Mill, though now claimed by the Danes as a work of their
early ancestors. Professor Rafn, in the Mémoires de la Société Royale
des Antiquaires du Nord, for 1838-1839, says:
"There is no mistaking in this instance the style in which the more
ancient stone edifices of the North were constructed, the style which
belongs to the Roman or Ante-Gothic architecture, and which, especially,
after the time of Charlemagne, diffused itself from Italy over the whole
of the West and the North of Europe, where it continued to predominate
until the close of the 12th century; that style, which some authors
have, from one of its most striking characteristics, called the round
arch style, the same which in England is denominated Saxon and sometimes
Norman architecture.
"On the ancient structure in Newport there are no ornaments remaining,
which might possible have served to guide us in assigning the probably
date of its erection. That no vestige whatever is found of the pointed
arch nor any approximation to it, is indicative of an earlier rather
than of a later period. From such characteristics as remain, however, we
can scarcely form any other inference than one, in which I am persuaded
that all, who are familiar with Old-Northern architecture will concur,
THAT THIS BUILDING WAS ERECTED AT A PERIOD DECIDEDLY NOT LATER THAN THE
12TH CENTURY. This remark applies, of course, to the original building
only, and not to the alterations that it subsequently received; for
there are several such alterations in the upper part of the building
which cannot be mistaken, and which were most likely occasioned by its
being adapted in modern times to various uses, for example as the
substructure of a wind-mill, and latterly as a hay magazine. To the same
times may be referred the windows, the fireplace, and the apertures made
above the columns. That this building could not have been erected for a
wind-mill, is what an architect will easily discern."
I will not enter into a discussion of the point. It is sufficiently well
established for the purpose of a ballad; though doubtless many an honest
citizen of Newport, who has passed his days within sight of the Round
Tower, will be ready to exclaim with Sancho; "God bless me! did I not
warn you to have a care of what you were doing, for that it was nothing
but a wind-mill; and nobody could mistake it, but one who had the like
in his head."]
"Speak! speak! thou fearful guest!
Who, with thy hollow breast
Still
in rude armor drest,
Comest to daunt me!
Wrapt not in Eastern balms,
But
with thy fleshless palms
Stretched, as if
asking alms,
Why dost thou haunt me?"
Then, from those cavernous eyes
Pale flashes seemed to rise,
As
when the Northern skies
Gleam in December;
And, like the water's flow
Under
December's snow,
Came a dull voice of woe
From the heart's chamber.
"I was a Viking old!
My
deeds, though manifold,
No Skald in song
has told,
No Saga taught thee!
Take heed, that in thy verse
Thou dost the tale rehearse,
Else
dread a dead man's curse!
For this I sought
thee.
"Far in the Northern Land,
By
the wild Baltic's strand,
I, with my
childish hand,
Tamed the ger-falcon;
And, with my skates fast-bound,
Skimmed the half-frozen Sound,
That
the poor whimpering hound
Trembled to walk
on.
"Oft to his frozen lair
Tracked
I the grisly bear,
While from my path the
hare
Fled like a shadow;
Oft through the forest dark
Followed
the were-wolf's bark
Until the soaring lark
Sang from the meadow.
"But when I older grew,
Joining
a corsair's crew,
O'er the dark sea I flew
With the marauders.
Wild
was the life we led;
Many the souls that
sped,
Many the hearts that bled,
By our stern orders.
"Many a wassail-bout
Wore
the long Winter out;
Often our midnight
shout
Set the cocks crowing,
As we the Berserk's tale
Measured
in cups of ale,
Draining the oaken pail,
Filled to o'erflowing.
"Once as I told in glee
Tales
of the stormy sea,
Soft eyes did gaze on
me,
Burning yet tender;
And as the white stars shine
On
the dark Norway pine,
On that dark heart of
mine
Fell
their soft splendor.
"I wooed the blue-eyed maid;
Yielding, yet half afraid,
And
in the forest's shade
Our vows were
plighted.
Under its loosened vest
Fluttered her little breast,
Like birds within their nest
By the hawk frighted.
"Bright in her father's hall
Shields gleamed upon the wall,
Loud
sang the minstrels all,
Chaunting his
glory;
When of old Hildebrand
I
asked his daughter's hand,
Mute did the
minstrels stand
To hear my story,
"While the brown ale he quaffed,
Loud then the champion laughed,
And
as the wind-gusts waft
The sea-foam
brightly,
So the loud laugh of scorn,
Out of those lips unshorn,
From
the deep drinking-horn
Blew the foam
lightly.
"She was a Prince's child,
I
but a Viking wild,
And though she blushed
and smiled,
I was discarded!
Should not the dove so white
Follow the sea-mew's flight,
Why
did they leave that night
Her nest
unguarded?
"Scarce had I put to sea,
Bearing
the maid with me,—
Fairest of all was
she
Among the Norsemen!—
When on the white sea-strand,
Waving his armed hand,
Saw we
old Hildebrand,
With twenty horsemen.
"Then launched they to the blast
Bent like a reed each mast,
Yet
we were gaining fast,
When the wind failed
us:
And with a sudden flaw
Came round the gusty Skaw,
So
that our foe we saw
Laugh as he hailed us.
"And as to catch the gale
Round
veered the flapping sail,
Death! was the
helmsman's hail;
Death without quarter!
Mid-ships
with iron keel
Struck we her ribs of steel;
Down her black hulk did reel
Through the black water
"As with his wings aslant,
Sails
the fierce cormorant,
Seeking some rocky
haunt,
With his prey laden,
So toward the open main,
Beating
to sea again,
Through the wild hurricane,
Bore I the maiden.
"Three weeks we westward bore,
And when the storm was o'er,
Cloud-like
we saw the shore
Stretching to lee-ward;
There for my lady's bower
Built
I the lofty tower,
Which, to this very
hour,
Stands looking sea-ward.
"There lived we many years;
Time
dried the maiden's tears;
She had forgot
her fears,
She was a mother;
Death closed her mild blue eyes,
Under that tower she lies;
Ne'er
shall the sun arise
On such another!
"Still grew my bosom then,
Still
as a stagnant fen!
Hateful to me were men,
The sunlight hateful!
In the vast forest here,
Clad in
my warlike gear,
Fell I upon my spear,
O, death was grateful!
"Thus, seamed with many scars,
Bursting these prison bars,
Up
to its native stars
My soul ascended!
There from the flowing bowl
Deep
drinks the warrior's soul,
Skoal! to
the Northland! Skoal!"[A]
—Thus the tale ended.
It was the schooner Hesperus,
That sailed the wintry sea;
And
the skipper had taken his little daughter
To
bear him company.
Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,
Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
And
her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,
That
ope in the month of May.
The skipper he stood beside the helm
With his pipe in his mouth,
And
watched how the veering flaw did blow
The
smoke now West, now South.
Then up and spake an old Sailor,
Had sailed the Spanish Main,
"I
pray thee, put into yonder port,
For I fear
a hurricane.
"Last night, the moon had a golden ring,
And to-night no moon we see!"
The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe
And a scornful laugh laughed he.
Colder and louder blew the wind,
A gale from the Northeast;
The
snow fell hissing in the brine,
And the
billows frothed like yeast.
Down came the storm, and smote amain,
The vessel in its strength;
She
shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,
Then
leaped her cable's length.
"Come hither! come hither! my little daughter,
And do not tremble so;
For
I can weather the roughest gale,
That ever
wind did blow."
He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat
Against the stinging blast;
He
cut a rope from a broken spar,
And bound
her to the mast.
"O father! I hear the church-bells ring,
O say, what may it be?"
"'T
is a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast,"
And
he steered for the open sea.
"O father! I hear the sound of guns,
O say, what may it be?"
"Some
ship in distress, that cannot live
In such
an angry sea!"
"O father! I see a gleaming light,
O say, what may it be?"
But the
father answered never a word
A frozen
corpse was he.
Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
With his face to the skies,
The
lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow
On
his fixed and glassy eyes.
Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed
That saved she might be;
And
she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave,
On
the Lake of Galilee.
And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept
Towards the reef of Norman's Woe.
And ever the fitful gusts between
A sound came from the land;
It
was the sound of the trampling surf,
On the
rocks and the hard sea-sand.
The breakers were right beneath her bows,
She drifted a dreary wreck,
And
a whooping billow swept the crew
Like
icicles from her deck.
She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool,
But
the cruel rocks, they gored her side
Like
the horns of an angry bull.
Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
With the masts went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass, she strove and sank
Ho! Ho! the breakers roared!
At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach,
A fisherman stood aghast,
To see
the form of a maiden fair,
Lashed close to
a drifting mast.
The salt sea was frozen on her breast
The salt tears in her eyes;
And
he saw her hair, like the brown sea weed
On
the billows fall and rise.
Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow!
Christ
save us all from a death like this
On the
reef of Norman's Woe!