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The Loss of the Eurydice
- Foundered March 24. 1878
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- THE Eurydice–it concerned thee, O Lord:
- Three hundred souls, O alas! on board,
- Some asleep unawakened, all un-
- warned, eleven fathoms fallen
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- Where she foundered! One stroke
- Felled and furled them, the hearts of oak!
- And flockbells off the aerial
- Downs’ forefalls beat to the burial.
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- For did she pride her, freighted fully, on
- Bounden bales or a hoard of bullion?–
- Precious passing measure,
- Lads and men her lade and treasure.
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- She had come from a cruise, training seamen–
- Men, boldboys soon to be men:
- Must it, worst weather,
- Blast bole and bloom together?
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- No Atlantic squall overwrought her
- Or rearing billow of the Biscay water:
- Home was hard at hand
- And the blow bore from land.
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- And you were a liar, O blue March day.
- Bright sun lanced fire in the heavenly bay;
- But what black Boreas wrecked her? he
- Came equipped, deadly-electric,
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- A beetling baldbright cloud thorough England
- Riding: there did storms not mingle? and
- Hailropes hustle and grind their
- Heavengravel? wolfsnow, worlds of it, wind there?
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- Now Carisbrook keep goes under in gloom;
- Now it overvaults Appledurcombe;
- Now near by Ventnor town
- It hurls, hurls off Boniface Down.
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- Too proud, too proud, what a press she bore!
- Royal, and all her royals wore.
- Sharp with her, shorten sail!
- Too late; lost; gone with the gale.
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- This was that fell capsize,
- As half she had righted and hoped to rise
- Death teeming in by her portholes
- Raced down decks, round messes of mortals.
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- Then a lurch forward, frigate and men;
- ‘All hands for themselves’ the cry ran then;
- But she who had housed them thither
- Was around them, bound them or wound them with her.
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- Marcus Hare, high her captain,
- Kept to her–care-drowned and wrapped in
- Cheer’s death, would follow
- His charge through the champ-white water-in-a-wallow.
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- All under Channel to bury in a beach her
- Cheeks: Right, rude of feature,
- He thought he heard say
- ‘Her commander! and thou too, and thou this way.’
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- It is even seen, time’s something server,
- In mankind’s medley a duty-swerver,
- At downright ‘No or yes?’
- Doffs all, drives full for righteousness.
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- Sydney Fletcher, Bristol-bred,
- (Low lie his mates now on watery bed)
- Takes to the seas and snows
- As sheer down the ship goes.
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- Now her afterdraught gullies him too down;
- Now he wrings for breath with the deathgush brown;
- Till a lifebelt and God’s will
- Lend him a lift from the sea-swill.
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- Now he shoots short up to the round air;
- Now he gasps, now he gazes everywhere;
- But his eye no cliff, no coast or
- Mark makes in the rivelling snowstorm.
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- Him, after an hour of wintry waves,
- A schooner sights, with another, and saves,
- And he boards her in Oh! such joy
- He has lost count what came next, poor boy.–
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- They say who saw one sea-corpse cold
- He was all of lovely manly mould,
- Every inch a tar,
- Of the best we boast our sailors are.
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- Look, foot to forelock, how all things suit! he
- Is strung by duty, is strained to beauty,
- And brown-as-dawning-skinned
- With brine and shine and whirling wind.
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- O his nimble finger, his gnarled grip!
- Leagues, leagues of seamanship
- Slumber in these forsaken
- Bones, this sinew, and will not waken.
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- He was but one like thousands more,
- Day and night I deplore
- My people and born own nation,
- Fast foundering own generation,
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- I might let bygones be–our curse
- Of ruinous shrine no hand or, worse,
- Robbery’s hand is busy to
- Dress, hoar-hallowèd shrines unvisited;
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- Only the breathing temple and fleet
- Life, this wildworth blown so sweet,
- These daredeaths, ay this crew, in
- Unchrist, all rolled in ruin–
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- Deeply surely I need to deplore it,
- Wondering why my master bore it,
- The riving off that race
- So at home, time was, to his truth and grace
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- That a starlight-wender of ours would say
- The marvellous Milk was Walsingham Way
- And one–but let be, let be:
- More, more than was will yet be.–
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- O well wept, mother have lost son;
- Wept, wife; wept, sweetheart would be one:
- Though grief yield them no good
- Yet shed what tears sad truelove should.
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- But to Christ lord of thunder
- Crouch; lay knee by earth low under:
- ‘Holiest, loveliest, bravest,
- Save my hero, O Hero savest.
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- And the prayer thou hearst me making
- Have, at the awful overtaking,
- Heard; have heard and granted
- Grace that day grace was wanted.’
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- Not that hell knows redeeming,
- But for souls sunk in seeming
- Fresh, till doomfire burn all,
- Prayer shall fetch pity eternal.
