THE mist lay still on Heartbreak Hill,
The sea was cold below,
The waves rolled up and one by one
Broke heavily and slow;
And through the clouds the gray gulls fled,
The gannets whistled past,
Across the dunes the wailing loons
Hid from the rising blast.
The moaning wind, that all day long
Had haunted marsh and lea,
Went mad by night, and beating round,
Fled shrieking out to sea.
The crested waves turned gray to white,
That tossed the drifting spar,
But far more bright the yellow light
That gleamed on Ipswich Bar.
Old Harry Main, wild Harry Main,
Upon the shifting sand
Had built a flaming beacon-light
To lure the ships to land.
“The storm breaks out and far to-night, —
They seek a port to bide;
God rest ye, sirs, on Ipswich Bar
Your ships shall surely ride.
“They see my fires, my dancing fires,
They lay their courses down,
And ill betide the mariners
That make for Ipswich town,
“For mine the wreck, and mine the gold,—
With none to lay the blame, —
So hold ye down to-night, good sirs,
And I will feed the flame!”
Oh, dark the night and wild the gale!
The skipper hither turned
To where, afar, on Ipswich Bar,
The treacherous beacon burned;
With singing shrouds and snapping sheets
The vessel swiftly bore
And headed for the guiding lights
Which shone along the shore.
The shoaling waters told no tale,
The tempest made no sign,
Till full before her plunging bows
Flashed out a whitened line;
She struck, — she heeled, — the parting stays
Went by with mast and spar,
And then the wave and rain beat out
The light on Ipswich Bar.
Gray dawn beneath the dying storm; .
A figure gaunt and thin
Went splashing through the tangled sedge
To drag the treasure in;
For when the darkness broke away,
The lances of the moon
Had shown him where lay, bow in air,
A wrecking picaroon.
What matter if the open day
Bore witness to his shame?
’T was his the -wreck and his the gold,
And none had seen to blame.
He did not know the eyes of men
Were watching from afar,
As Harry Main went back and forth
The length of Ipswich Bar.
They told the Ipswich fisher-folk,
Who, all aghast and grim,
Came running down through Pudding Lane
In maddened search for him;
No word, — no blow, — no bitter jest, —
They did not strike nor mar,
But short the shrift of Harry Main
That day on Ipswich Bar.
They marched him out at ebb of tide
Where lay the shattered wreck,
And bound him to the dripping rocks
With chains about his neck;
With chains about his guilty neck
They left him to the wave —
The lapping tide rose eagerly
To hide the wrecker’s grave.
And now when sudden storms strike down
With hoarse and threatening tones,
Old Harry Main must rise again
And gird his sea-wracked bones
To coil a cable made of sand
Which ever breaks in twain,
While echoing through the salted marsh
Is heard his clanking chain.
When rock and shoal are white with foam,
The watchers on the sands
Can see his ghostly form rise up
And wring his fettered hands.
And out at sea his cries are heard
Above the storm and far,
Where, cold and still, old Heartbreak Hill
Looks down on Ipswich Bar.