A Summer's dawn and a tranquil sea;
But lurid all with smoke:
For a bark was burning furiously,
What time the morning broke.
Terrible? ay, but risk there was none,
For stern the Captain's sway;
And when he spoke, each mother's son
Could not but choose obey.
"Man the boats!"—the boats were manned,
In order, one by one;
To pull a hundred miles to land,
All under the Summer's sun.
Four stalwart rowers bend to their oars:
Four sitters at the stern—
Three men and a woman—silent sit,
Watching the vessel burn.
They were no tremblers: each had known
Perils by land and deep;
But the woman alone would gently moan,
And at times, perforce, would weep.
Yet soon the sun was high in heaven,
And the sea was a-glow: and then
The temper of those men peered out—
Of those three fearless men.
One thought his white hand by the sun would be tanned;
One felt they were wrong to risk it,
In sweltering heat, with nothing to eat
But a bit of dry ship-biscuit.
The third brooded over his handful of freight
Going down, uninsured, to the deep:
But the woman alone would gently moan,
And at times, perforce, would weep;
Till a sense of shame the three o'ercame,
And a curious wish to know
Why, still unfearing, she gave way
To her uncomplaining woe.
"Ah, Sirs!"—she faltered in reply—
"The danger is easily braved:
But my husband may hear that the ship is burnt—
And not that we are saved!"