Kate.
For she had a tongue with a twang,
Would cry to a sailor, go hang!
She loved not the savor of tar or of pitch,--
Then to sea, boys, and let her go hang!"

Then his sonorous voice rang out these quaint words to the night:

"Full fathom five thy father lies:
Of his bones are coral made:
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade--"

He abruptly broke off, and commenced:

"Break, break, break
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

O, well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O, well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on,
To the haven under the hill;
But oh, for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me."

Suddenly he paused, while a paleness like death overspread his face; the
spokes of the wheel slipped from his hold, and he called for help; but the
wind went moaning through the shrouds, and drowned his voice. The sea
moaned and the ship drifted with the wind.

"It comes again!" he cried; "the graveyard face! Go! I cannot bear those
sad, reproachful eyes--those arms outstretched, asking mercy! Send foul
fiends to torture me, and make my dreams hideous nightmares, but not this
beautiful form to mock me with its purity, and kill me with its mild
reproach. It has gone. But it will come again! It steals on me in the awful
hours of night, when the air seems supernatural, and the mind is accessible
to fear. It stood by my hammock last night; my conscious soul looked
through my closed eyelids, and sleep felt its dreadful presence. If it
comes again I will throw myself into the sea! Hush!" he whispered, "it
stands by the cabin door, so pale! so pale! Come not near me, pensive
ghost. Give me help, somebody! help! help!"

He sunk down by the wheel.

The stars, at the approach of morning, had grown as white as pond-lilies,
and the wind had died away; but the same moan came up from the sea. On in
the morning twilight drifted the ship for an hour, without a helmsman, save
that unseen hand which guides all things--which balances with equal love
and tenderness a dew-drop or a world.